Aperiodic arrays for space applications: an effective strategy for the overall design

In active array antennas for satellite communications, one wants to reduce as much as possible the number of control points while fulfilling severe constraints on gain for each of the beams as well as on intra beams interference. A candidate architecture to perform the job is an aperiodic sparse array with isophoric or at most quantized excitations. In this paper, we present and discuss an overall three steps strategy for an effective design of this kind of arrays. In particular, the emphasis is on the first (establishment of an optimal continuous reference sources) and second (discretization into an array) of these steps. The procedure takes somehow into account the single element dimensions, which allow to get a good aperture efficiency with a single or at most a couple of different radiating elements.