Synthesis of sparse planar arrays with multiple patterns: An automatic coordinate pairing approach

An innovative algorithm to synthesize a non-uniform sparse planar array with as few elements as possible is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is aimed at multiple different beampatterns, and can directly estimate the exact positions of the planar array elements, avoiding the problem of coordinate pairing between X-axis and Y-axis. To achieve this, the proposed method utilizes the rotational invariance caused by the translation invariant structure of the steering vector. It derives the array element position from the data matrix based on unitary ESPRIT and employs a low-rank approximation operation to construct a matrix containing the position information of the reconstructed sparse array elements. Automatic pairing is then realized by assigning the real and imaginary parts of the matrix eigenvalues to the abscissa and ordinate of elements one-to-one. The paper presents two different simulation scenarios to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm, with the results showing a reduction in the number of array elements by 20%-30% while ensuring low reconstruction error, low time, and space complexity. Overall, the proposed algorithm provides an effective solution for synthesizing non-uniform sparse planar arrays with fewer elements, which can significantly reduce costs and complexity in various applications. & COPY; 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.