Performance Analysis of Flat-Topped Beam Array for Millimeter Wave Application

Though flat-topped beams (FTB) can be flexibly synthesized with various specifications, including beam direction, beamwidth, sidelobe level, transition regions, etc., the performance of the synthesized FTB is basically governed by the scale of antenna array, which is analyzed in this paper. There is a lower boundary for the synthesized beamwidth with a fixed array scale, and the aperture efficiency is inversely proportional to the desired beamwidth as well. Thus, for millimeter-wave applications, a trade-off design should be considered between the desired beamwidth and the aperture efficiency with a fixed antenna array.