A Sparsely Designed Retrodirective Transponder

Retrodirective arrays have shown great potential for use as wireless transponders due to their automatic source tracking ability. A retrodirective transponder based on a sparse array is presented. The architecture uses a sparse array design to reduce the amount of elements, and thus circuitry required. A genetic algorithm is used to determine the optimal element positions in the array. The sparse architecture is compared with the uniform array architecture. Measured results verify the sparse concept as well as retrodirectivity