Antenna radiation patterns have side-lobes that add to ambiguity in the form of ghosting and object repetition in SAR images. An L-band 1.27GHz, 2×5 element proximity-coupled corner-truncated patch array antenna synthesized using the Dolph-Chebyshev method to reduce side-lobe levels is proposed. The designed antenna was sim-ulated, optimized, and fabricated for antenna performance parameter measurements. Antenna performance characteristics show good agree-ment with simulated results. A set of antennas were fabricated and then used together with a custom synthetic aperture radar system and SAR imaging performed on a point target in an anechoic chamber. Imaging results are also discussed in this paper showing improvement in image output. The antenna and its connected SAR systems developed in this work are different from most previous work in that this work is utilizing circular polarization as opposed to linear polarization.

In this paper, we present a noble pattern synthesis method of linear and planar array antennas, with non-uniform spacing, for simultaneous reduction of their side-lobe level and pattern distortion during beam steering. In the case of linear array, the Gauss-Newton method is applied to adjust the positions of elements, providing an optimal linear array in the sense of side-lobe level and pattern distortion. In the case of planar array, the concept of thinned array combined with non-uniformly spaced array is applied to obtain an optimal two dimensional (2-D) planar array structure under some constraints. The optimized non-uniformly spaced linear array is extended to the 2-D planar array structure, and it is used as an initial planar array geometry. Next, we further modify the initial 2-D planar array geometry with the aid of thinned array theory in order to reduce the maximum side-lobe level. This is implemented by a genetic algorithm under some constraints, minimizing the maximum side-lobe level of the 2-D planar array. It is shown that the proposed method can significantly reduce the pattern distortion as well as the side-lobe level, although the beam direction is scanned.

A new approach to correcting the array amplitude failure by a combination of B-spline techniques and genetic algorithms is proposed. Some array elements indicate the control knots for a B-spline curve by their nominal positions and amplitudes; others distribute the excitation amplitudes according to the sampling points on the curve. The inherent smoothness of the B-spline curves reduce the effect of excessive coupling between adjacent elements. Genetic algorithms are used to search for a quasi-optimized B-spline curve to produce the ultimate amplitude distribution for correcting the array failure. To demonstrate the method's effectiveness, simulation results for correcting failures with three- and four-element failures are presented.

A multi-range resolution radar using sideband spectrum energy is investigated. The basic system consists of a sharpening processor and least-error energy shaping filters. First, the sharpening processor makes long flat pulses sharpened. Next, the least-error shaping filters compress the input pulse into the desired pulse width. Then the output pulse width can become narrower than the reciprocal of the input bandwidth, because the least-error shaping filters make the equivalent bandwidth expanded by the enhancement of the sideband spectrum energy and the suppression of the main spectrum. The transmitted signals with simple phase modulation are studied to obtain the multi-range resolution where the pulse is compressed into a pulse with the same bandwidth and another pulse width equal to the reciprocal of the input bandwidth. The peak-to-sidelobe ratio after the pulse compression and the improvement factor of the output signal-to-noise ratio are measured. Further, the experimental results are shown to verify our proposed technique.

In this paper, we propose a multiple access technique using a simple interference canceller for common code transmission. In the proposed system, we adopt a common code for a receiver oriented system. All the transmitters utilize the same pseudo noise (PN) code to communicate with a receiver. Here the receiver structure becomes very simple with only one matched filter (MF). The proposed system has two very important merits. One is to avoid packet collisions by means of an interference cancellation method based on a common code chip shift transmission technique. That is, in order to avoid interference, which occurs because all the received signals have the same PN code, the same data with different timing are transmitted in two channels. In this study, we define and evaluate three types of packet collision which can be reduced by the canceller. The other merit is to reduce the system degradation due to the correlation side-lobes by means of a side-lobe canceller. In spread spectrum (SS) communication systems with PN codes like M-sequences, the correlation side-lobes appear at the detector in the case of the polarity data changing from 1 to 1 . The side-lobes degrade the system quality. Therefore in this system a interference canceller operates to cancel the correlation side-lobes and attempts to reduce the system degradation. Finally, by our cancellation method it becomes possible to realize a simple multiple access using only one PN code under the condition of a receiver oriented system without a base station.