A Novel Optimal Design of Antenna Array in Aperture Synthesis Radiometers

Radiometric sensitivity and synthetic solid angle are two important performance indexes of aperture synthesis radiometers. In this letter, the Generalized Interferometric Radiometer Uncertainty Principle (GIRUP) is presented to reveal the relationship between the two indexes. Based on the GIRUP, we propose a minimum configuration-factor array (MCA) for optimizing the product of radiometric sensitivity and synthetic solid angle (PRSSA). We introduce the configuration factor (CF) to characterize the effect of array configurations and windows on PRSSA. In linear array case, the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is utilized to search for an MCA. Numerical simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in PRSSA optimization.