Fast calculation of wideband beam pattern for designing large planar array

Owing to the high time consumption of calculating wideband beam pattern (BP) of large planar array, the common design methods which need massive iterations of calculating wideband BP have rarely been applied to design large wideband planar arrays. To solve such a problem, this paper proposes a fast method of calculating wideband BP, based on nonuniform fast Fourier transform and short inverse fast Fourier transform. Compared with Field II which is commonly-used, the calculation speed of the proposed method is increased by about two orders of magnitude with comparable accuracy. It is proven that the design methods which need massive iterations can directly employ wideband BP to design better large wideband planar arrays, based on the proposed fast method of calculating wideband BP.