PATTERN SYNTHESIS OF PLANAR ANTENNA ARRAY VIA CONVEX OPTIMIZATION FOR AIRBORNE FORWARD LOOKING RADAR

When airborne forward looking planar antenna is used to detect ground moving target, targets may be masked by strong clutter due to high sidelobes of the antenna pattern. In this paper, transmitting pattern is synthesized via convex optimization in order to suppress clutter from ground. Transmitting pattern has a low sidelobe illuminating short ranges and a high sidelobe focused into sky and remote ranges, which results in a relative small beamwidth in the elevation plane. In the azimuthal plane, transmitting pattern can form some notches in some fixed directions where strong clutter and interference exist. With insufficient training data due to a dispersion of clutter spectrum along range, adaptive receiving pattern with low sidelobes can be obtained by convex optimization when detecting remote targets. Simulation results show that transmitting and receiving patterns can effectively be designed via convex optimization for airborne forward looking radar.