An approach for shaped-beam pattern synthesis with spherical antenna array

Abstract

A modern high-speed aircraft will be installed with multiple antennas protruded from its structure for communication purpose, navigation, Instrumental Landing System etc. There may be more than 25 antennas that can cause considerable amount of drag that will ultimately affect the efficiency of aircraft. Nowadays, integration of these antenna on the surface of the aircraft is very much required and important. Need of these antenna will be more pronounced when large-aperture antennas are required in applications like military airborne radars,satellite communication etc. In this work, spherical shaped antenna array has been proposed and discussed in details with consideration of mutual coupling. Further, proposed spherical array has been utilized to generate Shaped-patterns. Radiation patterns like Cosecant-squared shaped pattern which are significantly applied in radar and navigation applications is generated using DE & SSO optimization techniques and compared with conventional arrays. Further, the work is extended to a newly designed shape of Indian geographical boundary-line with the proposed spherical array. Besides simulation results, to have a practical understanding of its radiation pattern, spherical array is modelled with patch dipole in Computer Simulation Technology(CST) software and is processed to obtain all the important parameters like Polar & 3D far field Radiation pattern, Side Lobe Level, Beam-width, S-parameters, E-field & H-field patterns, current-density etc