Complementarity based design of antenna systems for FMCW radar

A shared aperture antenna design based on the complementary partition of a fully populated, uniform array into two sub-arrays having similar radiation patterns is presented. The advocated strategy allows for supporting two different features that, concurrently, may implement a complex radio channel service. The desired partition can be arrived at by resorting to facile, deterministic placement methodologies employing, for example, the properties of the cyclic difference sets. The advantages following from the application of the proposed design procedure are illustrated by discussing the case of the transmit and receive antennas equipping a frequency-modulated, continuous-wave radar. The resulting antenna system displays attractive characteristics: narrow beam, low side-lobes and reduced phase noise.