Performance Analysis of Linearly Arranged Concentric Circular Antenna Array with Low Sidelobe Level and Beamwidth Using Robust Tapering Technique

Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Nov 11;13(11):1959. doi: 10.3390/mi13111959.

Abstract

In this research, a novel antenna array named Linearly arranged Concentric Circular Antenna Array (LCCAA) is proposed, concerning lower beamwidth, lower sidelobe level, sharp ability to detect false signals, and impressive SINR performance. The performance of the proposed LCCAA beamformer is compared with geometrically identical existing beamformers using the conventional technique where the LCCAA beamformer shows the lowest beamwidth and sidelobe level (SLL) of 12.50° and -15.17 dB with equal elements accordingly. However, the performance is degraded due to look direction error, for which robust techniques, fixed diagonal loading (FDL), optimal diagonal loading (ODL), and variable diagonal loading (VDL), are applied to all the potential arrays to minimize this problem. Furthermore, the LCCAA beamformer is further simulated to reduce the sidelobe applying tapering techniques where the Hamming window shows the best performance having 17.097 dB less sidelobe level compared to the uniform window. The proposed structure is also analyzed under a robust tapered (VDL-Hamming) method which reduces around 69.92 dB and 48.39 dB more sidelobe level compared to conventional and robust techniques. Analyzing all the performances, it is clear that the proposed LCCAA beamformer is superior and provides the best performance with the proposed robust tapered (VDL-Hamming) technique.

Keywords: Blackman; Chebyshev; FDL; Hamming; Hanning; LCCAA; ODL; Taylor; VDL; beamwidth; binomial; interference; optimal; robust tapering technique; robust techniques; sidelobe level; tapering techniques–uniform; triangular.