PHASED ARRAY BEAM SPOILING TECHNIQUE

Richard Kinsey
Sensis Corporation
5793 Widewaters Parkway
DeWitt, NY 13214

Introduction
The phased array beam spoiling technique, to be described in this paper,
is not new technology. It is simply based on the decades-old ray optics
technique that was used in the design of cosecant-squared reflector
antennas. However, conversations with other antenna engineers on the
subject led me to conclude that the utility of this technique for the dynamic
control of phased array patterns is often not understood and not utilized.
In spite of its simplicity and lack of mathematical elegance, it has proven
to be quite useful in certain applications.

Discussion of Technique
There are a number of published techniques for obtaining the amplitude
and phase of an array of elements to produce a specified beam shape.
The problem at hand is generally quite different. Given a pre-determined
element amplitude taper (e.g. sampled Taylor weights), determine a phase
distribution that will produce a sector beam pattern, a cosecant-squared
pattern, or some other specified pattern shape.

In the early days of shaped reflector design, it was common practice to

derive the reflector contour by ray-optical techniques wherein the relative
power in small wedges (angular sectors) of the primary feed pattern were
equated to the power in reflected wedges (angular sectors) of the desired
far-field pattern [1]. A like procedure for arrays is even simpler. The
normalized power in each array element corresponds to an equivalent
normalized sector of a cosecant-squared or sector beam pattern. The
linear (or collapsed planar) phase excitation is obtained by computing
each successive elemental phase gradient that “steers” that element to
the center of its corresponding pattern sector.

Because of the finite aperture, angular boundaries of the specified pattern

must be adjusted to obtain the best approximation to a desired pattern
shape, just as was done for the early reflector designs. It is therefore
convenient to write code providing a PC screen display of both the model
pattern and the array pattern from the last design iteration. This greatly
facilitates parameter changes for successive iterations. It is also useful to
optionally include the angular dependence of the array element gain in
the process of deriving the equivalent far-field pattern sectors.
 Go

csc2 
Go ( csc  )
2
B

 min  B  max

Fig. 1 Model Cosecant-squared Pattern

A model cosecant-squared pattern is shown in Fig. 1 with the angle

parameters min and B defining the nose region. The cosecant-squared
fall-off extends from the break angle of B to max. Note that a model fan
beam (sector pattern) is defined by simply setting max equal to B.

Spoiled-Beam Pattern Examples

The first example is an array 20l in height consisting of 32 dipole
elements (or rows of elements) with amplitudes sampled from a 25 dB
nbar=4 Taylor illumination. The unspoiled pencil beam pattern (Fig. 2) is
equiphased with a 10° aperture tiltback. It has a HPBW of 3.1° and a gain
loss (taper efficiency) of 0.43 dB.

0
Relative Power (dB)

-10

-20

-30

-40
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Elevation Angle (deg)

Fig. 2 Fully Collimated Pencil Beam Pattern

 0

Relative Power (dB)

-10

-20

-30

-40
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Elevation Angle (deg)

Fig. 3 Pattern of Fig. 2 Phase Spoiled for Cosecant-squared Coverage

Consider next a model pattern with a nose region from 0° to 4° and cscsq
coverage to 30°. The computer code has been written so that the initial
input values for min, B, and max define the model pattern parameters and
produce the initial beam spoiled pattern for screen display. Successive
iterations may then be made by changing the  values, which modifies the
phase spoiling but not the model pattern. For example, the pattern in Fig.
3 was obtained with final inputs of min = -1°, B = 3.5°, max = 36°, and a
cscsq roll-off to begin 2.0 dB below the pattern peak. The pattern nose
has a HPBW of 5.0° centered at an elevation angle of 2.0°. The one way
gain loss, relative to the unspoiled beam of Fig. 2, is 3.58 dB.
Approximately 1.5 dB of this loss is accounted for by the cosecant-
squared region and the rest by the broadened nose.

As the second example, an array 32l in height consists of 64 dipole rows

with amplitudes sampled from a 35 dB nbar=5 Taylor illumination. The
unspoiled pencil beam pattern at broadside (30° aperture tiltback) has a
HPBW of 2.13° and a gain loss of 0.93 dB. For a model pattern with a
nose region from 0° to 3° and a cscsq coverage to 40°, the phase spoiled
pattern in Fig. 4 was computed. Final inputs to obtain this result were min
= -0.5°, B = 2.5°, max = 45°, and a cscsq roll-off to begin 1.5 dB below the
pattern peak. The pattern nose has a HPBW of 4.0° centered at an
elevation angle of 1.6°. One way gain loss, relative to the unspoiled beam
is 3.89 dB.
 0

Relative Power (dB)

-10

-20

-30

-40
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Elevation Angle (deg)

Fig. 4 64 Element Array With Cscsq Phase Spoiling

As a final example, consider the same 64 element array with a

requirement for 2.5:1 beam broadening. The model parameters for this
case were input as min = -2.7°, B = 2.7°, and max = 2.7° with the array
vertical (no tiltback). In this case the spoiling phase was desired without
the elemental steering phase gradients to scan off-broadside. The pattern
shown in Fig. 5 was obtained using values of min = -3.3°, B = 3.2°, and
max = 3.2°. The HPBW = 5.5° and the one-way gain loss is 4.1 dB relative
to the fully collimated beam. This is virtually ideal spoiling as the ratios
between the 3 dB, 10 dB and 20 dB widths are the same as the ratios for
the unspoiled beam.
0

-10
Relative Power (dB)

-20

-30

-40

-50
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
Elevation Angle (deg)

Fig. 5 64 Element Array With 2.5:1 Beam Broadening

Reference:
[1] Samuel Silver, Ed., MICROWAVE ANTENNA THEORY AND DESIGN,
Rad. Lab. Series, vol. 12, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1949, 497-
502.