Density-tapered planar arrays for multibeam and shaped beam coverage in satellite communications

Interest in uniformly illuminated density-tapered planar antenna arrays has recently revived. For arrays consisting of concentric rings of elements, we present a non-stochastic algorithm that calculates ring radii for generation of pencil beams without the need for prior specification of the number of rings. If element phases are allowed to differ, the algorithm also synthesizes density-tapered arrays generating axially symmetric shaped footprint beams (to which the usual distortion methods can be applied to obtain beams with other contour shapes).