Unconventional Array Design in the Autocorrelation Domain—Isophoric 1-D Thinning

The synthesis of thinned isophoric arrays (TIAs) radiating mask-constrained patterns is addressed. By leveraging on the recently introduced formulation of the design of antenna arrays in the autocorrelation domain (AD), the TIA synthesis is recast as the matching of a target autocorrelation function derived from the user-defined guidelines and objectives. By exploiting the autocorrelation invariance of cyclic binary sequences, the AD solution space is significantly reduced and it is efficiently sampled by means of a discrete hybrid optimization approach. Two possible implementations of the AD-based TIA formulation are discussed and assessed in a set of representative numerical examples concerned with both ideal and real radiators, which are full-wave modeled to account for the mutual coupling effects. Comparisons to traditional pattern-domain (PD) synthesis methods are also considered to point out the features and the advantages of AD-based approaches.