The relationship between dispersion loss, sidelobe levels, and bandwidth in wideband radars with subarrayed antennas

The effects of wideband linear frequency modulated (LFM) signal processing in phased-array radars are discussed for a phased-array antenna with subarrays. In addition to the performance issues of dispersion loss and compressed pulse widths associated with wideband phased arrays, subarrayed architectures add the problem of wideband sidelobes, or subarray grating lobes. The authors address the relationships between these three performance parameters and the effect that three different spectral filtering techniques have on them. Three filtering scenes are studied: a matching filter, a matching filter following by a weighting filter in combination, and a weighting filter with Taylor distributed weights.<>