A Novel Low-sidelobe-level Hemispherical Conformal Antenna Array

A novel low-sidelobe-level hemispherical conformal antenna array is proposed in this paper. The layout of the proposed conformal array is inspired by the sunflower. Compared with the traditional spherical-planar array and spherical-circular array, the proposed conformal array can obtain lower maximum spatial SLLs without deteriorating the directivity coefficient of array. The simulation results show that the average maximum spatial sidelobe level can be reduced by more than 2dB for the whole scanning range. Furthermore, the direction coefficient decreases by only less than 2.5dB while the main beam direction of the proposed array scanning from 0 degrees to 90degrees, which has great potential compared with traditional planar array. Therefore, it is very promising for aircrafts, aerostats, missiles, and other platforms.