Synthesis of Dual-Beam Patterns by Exploiting Time-Modulation in Unequally Spaced Linear Arrays

In this paper, a novel approach for synthesizing multiple radiation patterns with reduced hardware complexity in the feed network by exploiting the additional degree of freedom ‘time’ in time modulated unequally spaced linear array (TMUSLA) is presented. In the proposed approach, with a suitable common set of element position of TMUSLA, the desired dual-beam pattern with low sidelobe level (SLL) is obtained by simply controlling the ON-OFF time sequence of the RF switches connected to the array elements. To show the effectiveness of the proposed array synthesis method, two dual beam patterns - first one as pencil (sum) beam (PB) and flat-topped beam (FTB) pattern, and the second one as sum and difference pattern with different constraints have been synthesized. For the successful generation of the desired power patterns, differential evolution (DE) algorithm is employed to obtain the optimum possible solution in terms of common element position, time-modulation, switching sequences and applicable excitation phase for the desired shape beam patterns. The superiority of the proposed approach with the favourable improved performance have been demonstrated by comparing the realized patterns with the state-of-the-art relevant reported works.