ADS interleaved arrays with reconfigurable polarization

Polarization-reconfigurable arrays play a fundamental role in radar systems in order to enhance their detection probability and cancel clutters, chaffs, and jammers [1]. In order to reach polarization flexibility, the integration of actively controlled elements in standard array configurations is often employed [2], but the overall system complexity and costs significantly increase [3]. To overcome such limitations, the use of two shared aperture arrays with independent polarizations was proposed in [3] by exploiting an interleaving scheme based on Difference-Sets (DSs). By combining the field generated by each sub-array, arbitrary polarizations, low sidelobes, large steering angles, and narrow beamwidths can be reached with a limited complexity of the underlying feeding network. Despite its theoretical and practical advantages, only few planar array geometries can be synthesized because of the limited number of available DS sequences [4]. © 2010 IEEE.