Design of Simplified Array Layouts for Preliminary Experimental Testing and Validation of Large AESAs

The problem of designing simplified and cost-effective versions of large phased arrays for a preliminary, but meaningful, experimental testing of a selected set of radiation requisites of the final/complete layouts is addressed. With reference to an array architecture composed by a wide set of equal (or different, even though limited to a finite number of sizes) functional blocks, each one containing the feeding network and the control line for a cluster of elements having independent transmit-receive modules, a novel and ad-hoc method is proposed for determining and selecting the minimum set of blocks of the fully populated array and the excitations of their elements to guarantee the fulfilment of a requested subset of performance of the final/complete arrangement. Representative results are shown and discussed to point out the peculiarities and the potential impact on the active electronically scanned array production cycle of the topic at hand as well as the effectiveness and the potentialities of the proposed design methodology.