Patent ID: 8111191

Claim:
A method to control an antenna pattern of a wideband array antenna connected to an electronic system and comprising: at least two antenna elements, the antenna pattern control comprising control of the directions of one or several main lobe/s and/or cancellation directions in the antenna pattern, the control being achieved by affecting waveforms between the antenna elements and the electronic system with phase shifts or time delays being individual for each antenna element, including that a wideband array antenna unit, comprising the wideband array antenna and transforming means, the wideband array antenna being operational over a system bandwidth and operating with an instantaneous bandwidth B, is accomplished by: the transforming means being inserted between each antenna element or sub array (E 1 -E N ) in the wideband array antenna and the electronic system, a sub array comprising at least two antenna elements, or the transforming means being integrated in the antenna element/sub array or the electronic system, a weighting function W(ω) being calculated for Q spectral components q, resulting from dividing the instantaneous bandwidth B in Q components, q being an integer index ranging from 0 to Q−1, for each antenna element or sub array (E 1 -E N ) using standard methods taking into account design requests valid for a centre frequency f q of each spectral component, and the transforming means affecting the waveforms between each antenna element or sub array (E 1 -E N ) and the electronic system, the waveforms being continuous or pulsed, by use of one or several parameters calculated from the weighting function W(ω) at discrete angular frequencies ω q , thus achieving extended control of the antenna pattern of the wideband array antenna over the instantaneous bandwidth B the extended control comprising the control of direction and width of one or several main lobe/s having frequency independent position and control of a number of wideband cancellation directions.