Title:God's Sunflower Array: An Improved Circular Array with better Maximum Sidelobe Level and First Null Beam Width Performance
VOLUME: 7 ISSUE: 2
Author(s):Saumendra Ku. Mohanty* and Biswa B. Mangaraj
Affiliation:Department of ECE, ITER, Siksha ‘O' Anusandhan University, Bhubaneswar, Department of ENTC, VSSUT, Burla, Odisha
Keywords:Circular arrays, First null beam width, God’s sunflower array, Maximum sidelobe level, Optimization,
Thinning.
Abstract:Background & Objective: This paper presents an optimized thinning process (based on density
tapering) applied to different circular arrays (CAs) such as circular ring array (CRA), circular concentric
array (CCA), circular planar array (CPA) and God's sunflower array (GSFLA). Here, all possible
circular arrays are simulated in one platform for better comparison amongst themselves.
Methods: The optimization process we have adopted here are particle swarm optimization (PSO) and
cuckoo search (CS) optimization techniques. The performance parameters such as maximum sidelobe
level (MSLL) and first null beam width (FNBW) of uniformly excited CAs are compared with optimized
non-uniformly excited CAs and optimized thinned CAs. Here, the optimized density tapering
thinning process provides much reduced MSLL and improved FNBW.
Results and Conclusion: The simulation results of different thinned CAs exhibit array taper efficiency
in the range of 46% - 61%. This further helps in increasing the overall system capacity keeping gain
constant for both thinned and non-thinned CAs. The proposed optimized thinned GSFLA outperforms
the other arrays in terms of FNBW and MSLL (~ -35 dB).
