A better method for designing direction-finding array structure over wide-band range

The introduction of the full paper reviews Refs. 1 through 7 and then proposes what we believe to be a better design method, which is explained in sections 1, 2 and 3. Section 1 derives eq. (4) as the unambiguity condition for the direction-finding array. Section 2 determines the relationship between direction-finding precision and array structure. The core of section 3 consists of: (1) we use the particle swarm optimization algorithm to design the high-precision direction-finding array; (2) we select the optimal arrays and find the right array structure, which can not only satisfy the unambiguity condition and the minimum array range but also obtain high direction-finding precision; (3) we give a six-step procedure of the algorithm for the optimal design of array structure. Section 4 presents a numerical example; the designed array structure is shown in Table 1; the simulation results, shown in Fig. 1, and their analysis show preliminarily that: (1) the array designed with our better method can indeed obtain high direction-finding precision over wide-band range; (2) it can break away from the constraint that the minimum array range should not be larger than half wavelength, thus effectively reducing the mutual coupling effect and providing a possibility for magnifying sensor aperture so as to reconnoiter lower-power density signal.