Synthesis and implementation aspects of linear antenna arrays with shaped radiation pattern for mobile communications

This study presents a technique to design antenna arrays with shaped radiation pattern. The efficiency of the proposed technique is demonstrated for the optimisation of a linear microstrip array for radio base stations of mobile communication systems. The main beam is shaped so as to provide uniform distribution of power inside a sector of a cell and to minimise the power radiated above the horizon. The synthesis of the shaped pattern is achieved by a combination of genetic algorithm and sequential quadratic programming. In contrast to several papers found in the literature that consider only isotropic antennas, the proposed approach takes into account all the radiation properties of small arrays, such as the mutual coupling between the array elements and edge effects. Finally, the design of the feeding system to produce the synthesised pattern is discussed. Measurements are used to validate the proposed technique.