Exhaustive Generation and Visual Browsing for Radiation Patterns of Linear Array Antennas

Almost any obtainable radiation pattern can be achieved with a phased array antenna if the phases and amplitudes are chosen correctly. However, if these are quantized, it can be a time consuming and difficult process for a human expert to determine the best Quantized excitation coefficients to produce a desired radiation pattern. In this paper, we explore the use of exhaustive generation of all possible permutations of quantized excitation coefficients. We provide visual query methods, which allow a designer to quickly explore the large number of resulting designs. In particular, we demonstrate our techniques with a system for phase-only synthesis of uniform linear arrays with quantized phase coefficients.