Phased array element shapes for suppressing grating lobes.

Most techniques for suppressing grating lobes in phased arrays while relaxing the interelement spacing requirement involve redistributing array elements in sparse aperiodic patterns, or varying the transmit-receive beam patterns. An alternative is presented which uses oversized array elements to eliminate grating lobes as a direct consequence of the element shape. It is shown that by using carefully shaped, overlapping elements, maximum scan angle can be exchanged for a reduced interelement spacing requirement.