A Study on the Optimum Synthesis of Beam Patterns and Excitation Current Weights for Monopulse Tracking Linear Array Antennas

In the sum and difference pattern synthesis problem of the equi-spaced monopulse tracking linear array antennas, an efficient numerical approach to deriving the relative excitation current weights of antenna elements is presented for the desired patterns. This method is based on the optimum perturbation of null points which are inherent to the Schelkunoffs polynomial representing the pattern array factor. Accordingly, opposite to the conventional method in which the excitation weights are directly optimized, this method is advantageous in that the patterns with the desired individual sidelobe levels(SLLs) and the corresponding excitation weights are easily synthesized by the control of null points. Furthermore, it is showed that two types of difference patterns can be synthesized as imposing the different initial values of null points in the optimization process. The proposed method is numerically validated by synthesizing the patterns with the arbitrary SLLs and substituting the extracted results into the array factor equation.