Study of Enhanced MISC-Based Sparse Arrays with High uDOFs and Low Mutual Coupling

TL;DR

This paper proposes an enhanced MISC-based sparse array design that achieves higher degrees-of-freedom and lower mutual coupling, improving array performance through a novel configuration and detailed analysis.

Contribution

The paper introduces an improved EMISC sparse array design with a new IES set and sub-array structure, outperforming previous MISC-based arrays in uDOFs and mutual coupling.

Findings

EMISC SA has higher uDOFs than IMISC SA.

EMISC SA exhibits lower mutual coupling.

Simulation confirms EMISC's superior performance.

Abstract

In this letter, inspired by the maximum inter-element spacing (IES) constraint (MISC) criterion, an enhanced MISC-based (EMISC) sparse array (SA) with high uniform degrees-of-freedom (uDOFs) and low mutual-coupling (MC) is proposed, analyzed and discussed in detail. For the EMISC SA, an IES set is first determined by the maximum IES and number of elements. Then, the EMISC SA is composed of seven uniform linear sub-arrays (ULSAs) derived from an IES set. An analysis of the uDOFs and weight function shows that, the proposed EMISC SA outperforms the IMISC SA in terms of uDOF and MC. Simulation results show a significant advantage of the EMISC SA over other existing SAs.