Types and comparison of low cost radar beamforming arrays

Abstract

This paper presents a study of various types of radar array architectures for low cost radar antennas with digital beamforming (BDF) capabilities. In addition to popular one-way and two-way beamforming, the emerging synthetic array radar (SAR)-like DBF and multiple-input-multiple-output (MEMO) DBF are examined with beamforming equations. New simple approximation formulae about half-power beamwidth (HPBW) estimation for SAR-like array and MIMO array are proposed for easier design reference. The comparison study shows that the SAR-like DBF or MEMO DBF can achieve much better angular higher resolution than the conventional oneway or twoway beamforming techniques.