Time Modulated Array Controlled by Periodic Pulsed Signals

During the last years, time-modulated array (TMA) architectures have been considering different switching network designs, focusing primarily on the radiation pattern synthesis. Unfortunately, switching networks exhibit a noticeable energy leakage due to the time the array elements remain off, yielding a strong degradation of the signal-to-noise ratio. To improve the corresponding network efficiency, configurations with multiple switches per antenna element, or even with single-pole multiple-throw switches, have been proposed. However, network switching efficiency improvements sacrifice beamforming flexibility. To overcome such a limitation, recent works have proposed to replace the switches with variable-gain amplifiers controlled by time-variant pulses based exclusively on sinusoids. In this work, we describe a TMA architecture based on ultra-wide band analog multipliers which is suitable for all kind of periodic pulses.