Optimizing the Sidelobe Level of a Two-Way Antenna Array Pattern by Thinning the Receive Aperture

The maximum sidelobe level of a two-way antenna array pattern of a radar is usually considered to be the product of the maximum sidelobe level of the transmit array time the maximum sidelobe level of the receive array. This paper shows that a thinned receive array can be synthesized in order to place nulls of the receive pattern in the directions of the peak sidelobes of the transmit pattern to get even lower two-way maximum sidelobe levels. The two-way pattern is synthesized using a genetic algorithm to find a thinned receive aperture that minimizes the maximum two-way sidelobe level with a uniform transmit array.