A Self-Replicating Single-Shape Tiling Technique for the Design of Highly Modular Planar Phased Arrays—The Case of L-Shaped Rep-Tiles

The design of irregular planar phased arrays (PAs) characterized by a highly-modular architecture is addressed. By exploiting the property self-replicating tile shapes, also known as rep-tiles, arising array layouts consist tiles having different sizes, but equal shape, all being generated assembling finite number smaller and congruent copies single elementary building-block. Towards this end, deterministic optimization strategy used so that rep-tile arrangement PA an optimal trade-off between complexity, costs, fitting user-defined requirements on radiated power pattern, while guaranteeing complete overlay aperture. As representative instance, such synthesis method applied to rectangular apertures with L-shaped tromino tiles. A set results, concerned ideal real antenna models, well, reported for validation purposes, point out possibility/effectiveness proposed approach, unlike state-of-the-art tiling techniques, reliably handle large-size apertures.