An effective approach to the synthesis of phase-only reconfigurable linear arrays

We present an effective approach to the optimal mask-constrained power pattern synthesis of uniformly spaced array antennas able to dynamically reconfigure their radiation pattern by modifying only the excitation phases. The proposed approach results in a design procedure having a very low computational burden and, by exploiting at best the knowledge available in the separate synthesis of each pattern, is able to solve the underlying combinatorial optimization problem and to achieve solutions close (or equivalent) to the global optimum. A set of representative examples are reported in order to validate the proposed approach. Some extensions of the developed theory to cases other than linear arrays are also outlined.