Null steering in irregularly spaced sparse antenna arrays using aperture distributed subarrays and hybrid optimiser

Sparse antenna arrays with irregularly spaced elements are increasingly being used in large array applications such as radio astronomy and radar. These antenna arrays may consist of hundreds of elements and therefore optimisation of these arrays becomes computationally expensive. This study proposes a novel solution to the problem of null synthesis in such arrays, where nulls are formed in prescribed locations for two-dimensional irregular sparse antenna arrays. The technique is based on a subarray and hybrid synthesis solution, where each subarray spans the entire antenna aperture. Single and multiple null formations with array gain maximisation are considered. The technique´s effectiveness is demonstrated using evolutionary optimisation algorithms; however, the basic technique can be used with other optimisation methods. The simulation results presented compare the null synthesis performance with and without subarraying and it has shown that the use of subarray results in improved convergence compared with a direct full array synthesis. Furthermore the technique is appropriate for ready application to parallel computer architectures.