Beam-scanning sparse array design with minimum spacing constraint

In this paper, we propose a new method to design a beam-scanning sparse array with minimum spacing constraint. The proposed method consists of two optimization steps. In the first step, an iterative reweighted L1-norm optimization is used to obtain an initial sparse array without minimum spacing constraint. In the second step, we carry on a series of element combination and perturbations to meet the minimum spacing constraint. An example is given to design a sparse array which has the minimum spacing of 0.5 wavelength and the beam scanning from −45° to 135°.