Talbot Effect Applied to Antennas

An experimental investigation is reported on how the Talbot effect may be exploited to produce a low volume antenna configuration that is suitable for high effective isotropic radiated power applications. In this architecture a periodic phase grating is combined with a sparse antenna array to form a structure that is simpler to fabricate than an equivalent active antenna array. This configuration is shown to have improved gain and lower grating lobe levels as compared to the sparse array. Finally, a simple technique is described to predict the far-field radiation pattern of this Talbot antenna array.