A Parameterized Pattern-Error Objective for Large-Scale Phase-Only Array Pattern Design

Modern phased-array radar systems increasingly require customized transmit patterns, implemented using only phase shifts, to illuminate or suppress interference from specific regions. Multiple custom patterns may be required at every beam position, requiring either precomputation of a large library of phase weights or real-time computation. Presented here is a weighted pattern-error formulation that offers efficient FFT-based calculation of both the objective and its gradient vector and is well suited for solving with efficient quasi-Newton methods. Although deliberately simple, the objective has several heuristic parameters for flexibility and can be used to simultaneously customize the mainbeam shape and selectively suppress the sidelobes. Examples demonstrate the feasibility of 1000+ element 2-D array designs, as well as a characterization of point nulls that commonly occur in the mainbeam of suboptimal local minima.