BA-Based Low-PSLL Beampattern Synthesis in the Presence of Array Errors

In practical scenarios, there are always array errors, which would increase the sidelobe level (SLL) of the array and distort the performance of the electronic devices consequently. Nevertheless, most of the reported works do not take these unavoidable errors into consideration when implementing array beampattern synthesis. To remedy this problem, a low sidelobe beampattern synthesis approach is proposed in the presence of array errors based on the bat algorithm (BA). In particular, the covariance matrix of the sidelobe region in the presence of array errors is incorporated into the optimization problem. Generally, there are many factors that would contribute to array errors in practical scenarios. Therefore, to reduce the influence of the uncertainty characteristic of the errors on the low-SLL beampattern synthesis, the statistical mean method is utilized to obtain a robust calculation of the covariance matrix in the presence of array errors. Theoretical analysis using signal processing technique and electromagnetic simulation using Ansoft HFSS workbench are combined to testify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Numerical results show that peak SLLs (PSLLs) of around −22dB and −20dB can be respectively achieved in the above two simulation situations with the obtained weight vectors.