An improved thinning method for conformal circular array based on ant colony algorithm

With the development of radar system, the use of conformal antennas for the radar receiver antennas array has been increasing rapidly. Because of the all-azimuth scan capability, the circular array is widely used in the radar system. However, when the radar location place is limited, the classical circular antenna array would not be placed successfully. In this paper, an improved antenna array which is to put some small circular arrays into a big circular array is proposed. And an improved thinning and optimization approach based on the ant colony algorithm is applied to obtain the optimal number of the antenna array elements with the restriction of the location. Moreover, the optimal performance of the difference of the peak sidelobe level (PSLL) and the main lobe width is derived. The computer simulation results show that the peak sidelobe level of the special antenna array could be reduced with the less antenna array elements at the same time. As a result, the system performance of the spatial resolution and estimation is improved. Simultaneously, the adaptivity for the different kinds of location place of this antenna array would be enhanced.