Design of linear arrays by employing randomly-overlapped subarrays

Some applications require a highly-directive antenna array which has to scan the main beam over a limited-field-of-view (LFOV) angular sector. The phase control over the radiating aperture can be achieved with phase-shifters or time delay units (TDUs). Due to their cost and bulkiness time delay units can be hardly employed at element level and their number needs to be minimized as much as possible. On the other hand, the use of phase shifters may cause a beam squint or a narrow band operation if compared to employing TDUs. A quite common solution adopted to overcome the aforementioned issues for such radiating structures relies on the employment of time-delayed subarrays for reducing the costs and allowing an easier practical realization. The present work investigates on the possible performance improvements provided by arrays organized into randomly-overlapped subarrays with respect to other subarray arrangements such as contiguous and uniformly-overlapped lattices.