Topband: Phased array books

[Victor A. Kean, Jr.]

On Tuesday 11 August 2009 12:57:42 pm Rudy Severns wrote:

> There is a very nice book on arrays, "M.T. Ma, Theory and Application of 
> Antenna Arrays, Wiley-Interscience, 1974".

I also recommend this book.

Ma's book has a discussion of calculating the optimum directivity from an arbitrary
array by adjusting the element currents and phases.  I was able to translate
the math into a script that runs on GNU Octave.  You feed the script a description
of an array, and it calculates the elements current and phases for optimum
directivity.  Then you retype all of that into NEC to prove that it really
works.

I translated the Octave script into some C code that calls the GNU scientific
library (which is probably what Octave is layered upon) and then calls GNUplot
to plot the pattern.  The pattern plots (calculated in only 2 dimensions by
assuming omni-directional elements) work out to be pretty close to what you
get from NEC.

I suppose I could post the program to Google code if anyone wants a look.

Victor, K1LT