Fast Sidelobe Calculation for Planar Phased Arrays Using an Iterative Sidelobe Seeking Method

Sidelobe level is a key parameter for phased array design. However, the conventional method for sidelobe level calculation is time-consuming due to the high sampling number of the radiation pattern. In this paper, an iterative sidelobe-seeking method for sidelobe calculation of arbitrarily distributed planar arrays is proposed to shorten the computing time. By applying Newton’s iterative method with an approximate formula, the proposed method uses less sampling to obtain the sidelobe positions and the peak sidelobe level. Numerical experiments were carried out and verified the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared with the conventional method, the proposed method had a similar optimization effect but saved 80% of the algorithm time in the synthesis of a sparse planar array.