Binary Array Beam Forming with Simulated Annealing Method

Binary weighted beamforming aims to achieve the optimal radiation pattern with only part of the array elements. The corresponding applications include sparse synthesis, management of aperture resources and targets allocation. However, due to the discrete weighting values as well as the corresponding non-deterministic polynomial computational complexity, most existing adaptive beamforming approaches are not suitable. Here, an algorithm based on simulated annealing optimization is proposed and the performances of binary weighted beamforming with one-dimensional and two-dimensional random arrays are numerically evaluated. According to the results with number of array elements ranging from 17 to 151, the side lobes can be reduced by 4.43 dB in average utilizing only around 66.7% of the total array elements while the width of the main lobe has increased by about 30%. For adaptive beamforming circumstances, an extra depth of up to 20 dB is achieved in presence of a preset jammer. Furthermore, a proof-of-principle optical experiment employing the spatial light modulator device is designed and studied through Huygens-Fresnel simulation.