Range-Angle Transceiver Beamforming Based on Semicircular-FDA Scheme

Incontrast to the steady angle-dependent transmit beampattern of the conventional phased array, the counterpart of a frequency diverse array (FDA) is basically time variant and range-angle coupled, which limits its potential application in many scenarios. In this article, we consider the beamforming in joint transmit and receive domains to handle the time-variant problem and propose a novel range-angle transceiver beamforming approach based on the semicircular-FDA scheme. In particular, the transceiver scheme of semicircular-FDA is first established.In the sequel, the periodicities of its transceiver beampattern in range and angle dimensions are briefly analyzed. Based on this analysis, a semicircular-FDA applied with nonlinearly increasing frequency offset (NIFO), termed as NIFO semicircular-FDA, is proposed to achieve the beampattern with a single mainlobe peak in range-angle space. Then, an optimization problem is constructed based on an advanced bat algorithm to further reduce the sidelobe level (SLL) of the NIFO semicircular-FDA. Numerical results show that focused time-invariant beampattern with low SLL in both range and angle dimensions can be achieved with the proposed approach.

Automated summary

This article proposes a range-angle transceiver beamforming approach based on the semicircular-FDA scheme to handle the time-variant problem. By analyzing the periodicities of the transceiver beampattern, a NIFO semicircular-FDA with a single mainlobe peak is achieved, and the sidelobe level is further reduced through an advanced bat algorithm optimization.