Effect of finite ground plane on irregular arrays with metallic elements

This paper investigates the impact of a finite ground plane on the radiation pattern of an irregular array composed of identical metallic elements. The currents on the antennas are approximated by the infinite ground plane solution, where the currents are efficiently computed with the help of macro-basis functions (MBFs) combined with an iterative solver, assuming image currents below the ground plane. The currents on the ground plane are then computed with the Physical Optics (PO) approximation. This method provides a good estimation of the radiation pattern, while offering a low complexity. Comparison of the radiation pattern computed with the proposed hybrid approach and a brute force solution is presented for an 8-elements sparse irregular array.