Design of Quantized Weight Concentric Ring Sparse Arrays in LEO Satellites

The low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite system has been one of the most promising technologies in 6G communications, where phased array antennas play an important role in compensating for the huge path loss between LEOs and ground-based terminals. To enhance the energy efficiency and steering precision of conventional phased array, this paper proposes an improved genetic algorithm to design a sparse phased array with quantized amplitude weights based on concentric ring arrangements, where the antenna array design problem is formulated into a sparse optimization problem. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the standalone use of concentric ring arrangements or traditional genetic algorithms, the proposed method significantly reduces the number of elements while effectively lowering the peak sidelobe level (PSLL) and maintaining a stable main lobe width, making it suitable for LEO satellite antenna array design requirements.