Low sidelobes in array antennas of equal sub-arrays through element phase control

In this work, a procedure for reducing the level of the sidelobes of large array antennas made of equal contiguous sub-arrays has been presented. Starting from the assumption that phase shifters are already present at each array element to steer the beam towards a desired direction, a phase control strategy based on the IPM has been profitably exploited to avoid the presence of high secondary lobes without the need of any additional hardware component. The results show the efficiency of the proposed approach.