Modular Design of Hexagonal Phased Arrays Through Diamond Tiles

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel modular design approach for hexagonal phased array antennas using diamond-shaped tiling, optimizing performance and pattern constraints through mathematical theorems and genetic algorithms.

Contribution

It introduces a new diamond tiling technique for hexagonal arrays, combining mathematical optimization and genetic algorithms for improved array performance.

Findings

Effective for low/medium-size arrays

Outperforms alternative tiling architectures

Validated with benchmark problems

Abstract

The modular design of planar phased array antennas with hexagonal apertures is addressed by means of innovative diamond-shaped tiling techniques. Both tiling configuration and subarray coefficients are optimized to fit user-defined power-mask constraints on the radiation pattern. Toward this end, suitable surface-tiling mathematical theorems are customized to the problem at hand to guarantee optimal performance in case of low/medium-size arrays, while the computationally hard tiling of large arrays is yielded thanks to an effective integer-coded GA-based exploration of the arising high-cardinality solution spaces. By considering ideal as well as real array models, a set of representative benchmark problems is dealt with to assess the effectiveness of the proposed architectures and tiling strategies. Moreover, comparisons with alternative tiling architectures are also performed to show to the interested readers the advantages and the potentialities of the diamond subarraying of hexagonal apertures.