Grating Lobe Reduction in Aperiodic Linear Arrays of Physically Large Antennas

We present performance bounds obtained from the optimization of the sidelobe levels of aperiodic linear arrays. The antennas comprising these arrays are large compared to the distance between neighboring antennas, a case not addressed in previously published work. This optimization is performed in pattern-space and is applicable over a wide range of scan angles. We show that grating lobes can be suppressed even when the elemental antennas are several wavelengths in size, provided that the ratio of the antenna size to the average spacing between the antenna center-points does not exceed 80%.