ABSTRACT A synthesis method of circular antenna array is proposed. The technologies of sparse array and continuous subarray division are used to reduce the element number and the design complexity of the feeding network. The array element positions, subarray excitation coefficients and element numbers of each subarray are optimized. Through strict formula derivation, the proposed method can constrain the array aperture size, element number of the antenna array, the minimum spacing of the adjacent elements and the element number of each subarray simultaneously. Also, different fitness functions are introduced to fulfill the low sidelobe pattern synthesis, beamforming and the synthesis of monopulse array antenna. When the element number is 80 and the entire array antenna is divided into 16 subarrays, the peak sidelobe level (PSLL) of the radiation pattern is less than −38.87 dB. The PSLL of the sum and difference radiation pattern of a 16‐element non‐uniform circular monopulse array antenna is less than −28 dB. Compared with other optimization methods, the proposed mathematical model optimized by IWO can obtain lower PSLL under the same number of arrays.
Guo et al. (2026) studied this question.