Antenna Arrays-A Computational Approach

This book is intended to be a tutorial on antenna arrays. Each chapter builds upon the previous chapter and progressively addresses more difficult subject material. The many pictures and examples introduce the reader to practical applications. The book starts with some electromagnetics/antennas/antenna systems information that is relevant to the other eight chapters. The next two chapters deal with the analysis and synthesis of arrays of point sources and their associated array factors. These chapters would be useful for acoustic sensors as well as electromagnetic sensors. Chapter 4 presents a sampling of different kinds of elements that replace the point sources of the previous two chapters. The next chapter shows that the elements do not have to lie along a line or in a plane. Antenna elements may lie conformal to a surface or be distributed in space. Chapter 6 introduces mutual coupling where the elements radiate and receive electromagnetic waves, so they interact. These interactions are extremely complex and difficult to predict. Computer modeling and experiments are needed to predict the performance of arrays where mutual coupling is important. Chapter 7 introduces many different approaches to getting signals to and from the array elements to a computer where the signal detection takes place. Finally, the various numerical techniques behind smart antennas are introduced in Chapter 8. This book emphasizes the computational methods used in the design and analysis of array antennas. I generated most of the plots presented in this book using one of three commercial software packages. MATLAB (MATLAB Version 2009a, The Math Works, www.mathworks.com, 2009) is the primary program used to do the plotting and calculations. MATLAB was also used to do many of the computations and is even useful for controlling experimental hardware. I used FEKO (FEKO, Suite 5.4, EM Software and Systems, www. feko.info, 2008) and CST Microwave Studio (CST Microwave Studio, Version 2009.07,