3D Spherical Directly-Connected Antenna Array for Low-Altitude UAV Swarm ISAC

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spherical directly-connected antenna array (DCAA) for low-altitude UAV swarm ISAC, offering improved 3D angular resolution, reduced hardware costs, and enhanced communication and sensing performance over traditional arrays.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel spherical DCAA architecture that overcomes limitations of RAA and HBF arrays, providing superior 3D resolution and cost-effective hardware design for UAV swarm applications.

Findings

DCAA achieves better angular resolution than traditional arrays.

DCAA provides higher spectral efficiency in simulations.

DCAA is well-suited for UAV swarm ISAC scenarios.

Abstract

Recently a novel multi-antenna architecture termed ray antenna array (RAA) was proposed, where several simple uniform linear arrays (sULAs) are arranged in a ray-like structure to enhance communication and sensing performance. By eliminating the need for phase shifters, it also significantly reduces hardware costs. However, RAA is prone to signal blockage and has no elevation angle resolution capability in three-dimensional (3D) scenarios. To address such issues, in this paper we propose a novel spherical directly-connected antenna array (DCAA), which composes of multiple simple uniform planar arrays (sUPAs) placed over a spherical surface. All elements within each sUPA are directly connected. Compared to conventional arrays with hybrid analog/digital beamforming (HBF), DCAA significantly reduces hardware cost, improves energy focusing, and provides superior and uniform angular res olution for 3D space. These advantages make DCAA particularly suitable for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) in low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) swarm scenarios, where targets may frequently move away from the boresight of traditional arrays, degrading both communication and sensing performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed spherical DCAA achieves significantly better angular resolution and higher spectral efficiency than conventional array with HBF, highlighting its strong potential for UAV swarm ISAC systems.