Adjustment of Beamwidth and Side-Lobe Level of Large Phased-Arrays Using Particle Swarm Optimization Technique

A particle swarm optimization technique is applied to maintain a constant beamwidth of a large phased-array when its major lobe is pointing away from the broadside direction. The first side-lobe is suppressed to a minimum possible level, at the expense of raising the other side-lobes. Tapering of excitation amplitude across the aperture is also exercised to help suppressing the side-lobe level.