A kind of sidelobe suppression approach with effective reduction of computation cost for beam scanning at subarray level

In subarray level phased array, it requires digital beam scanning at subarray level in many applications, for instance, multiple beamforming. In this case, the suppression of pattern sidelobe is critical, and the key is construction of the weighting network at subarray level. This paper considers the whole array as a super array and each subarray as a super element. Based on the concept adopting super element patterns to express approximately original subarray patterns, the dimension of each matrix which is required for constructing weighting network could reduce to the same value as subarray numbers of the array compared to the original value equaling to element numbers. Consequently, the computation cost is remarkably reduced. And all the obtained new subarray patterns are quite similar in forms, widths and gains of mainbeams. For subarray level beam scanning, the proposed approach could reduce sidelobe of array pattern to certain extent. Simulation results demonstrate its validity.