Research On Optimization Of Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays In Aperture Synthesis Radiometers

Synthesis aperture interferometric microwave radiometers(SAIR) developed in the 1980’s are mainly used in the fields of space exploration, remote sensing of the Earth, etc. These applications require SAIR to have good performance of detection such as space resolution and system sensitivity etc. Antenna array in SAIR plays a key role in improving the performances. Currently, several array configurations such as U-, Y-, cross-shapes have been adopted in SAIRs, but they all have a certain degree of baseline redundancy, which is not beneficial to the radiometer’s detection imaging. Therefore, another type of antenna array—the circular array has been proposed and studied. Circular array can achieve zero-baseline redundancy, but its sample points’ distribution is uneven, so that brings the high peak side-lobe level which reduces the interference rejection capability. Therefore, a novel array structure—uniform concentric circular array(UCCA) is proposed to improve the above problems. The objective function and the specific and detailed optimization about UCCA is designed.Firstly, an introduction of antenna array configuration and its influence on SAIR’s detection performance is presented. Secondly, a novel style antenna array is proposed to improve the UCA’s disadvantage of high peak side-lobe level and small baseline redundancy. An analysis of the structural characteristics about UCCA is given. ICPSO algorithm is chosen to perform the optimization design of UCCA due to its fast convergence and high accuracy in low-dimension problems. An objective function and detailed optimization scheme are devised for the optimization design of the proposed UCCA. Finally,a series of simulation results and analysis on the graphic field and values fields on UCCA are given and a comparison with 1-ring circular array is also given to prove that the UCCA and its optimization schemes are feasible and effective.In conclusion, a new research ideas about antenna arrays optimization design in SAIRs system is provided and referenced.