Contiguity-Aware Excitation Matching Strategy for Linear Clustered Arrays

This article introduces a novel contiguity-aware (CA) excitation matching strategy for the synthesis of physically contiguous linear clustered antenna arrays by addressing both radiation performance and practical manufacturability challenges. The proposed approach integrates a contiguity-aware k-means method (CA-KMM) with a customized alternate projection method. The former optimizes the subarray configurations by jointly minimizing the excitation matching and the physical contiguity metrics, while the latter refines the cluster excitations to further enhance the power pattern matching accuracy. Extensive numerical evaluations, including comparative studies with state-of-the-art techniques and full-wave simulations, assess the effectiveness and the reliability of the proposed clustering method.