Design of Nonperiodic Density Tapered Arrays with CVT Distributions

Abstract

Density Tapered Arrays (DTA) with nonperiodic spaced elements have many interesting features when compared to traditional DTA in which antenna elements are located only at the intersections of periodic grid; however, a design method is yet to be fully develoed. A new approach is presented using Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations (CVT) to design DTA with nonperiodic element distributions proportional to the desired amplitude taper and with nonperiodic and ‘uniform’ properties. A 32.8λ diameter circular aperture array with 1656 elements is discussed and theoretical patterns are computed for density tapers modeled after −25 dB,−30 dB,−35 dB, and −40 dB circular Taylor distributions. The obtained sidelobe levels and aperture efficiency are better than heretofore reported.