Optimized Multi-Level Prime Array Configurations

Abstract: Antenna arrays have many applications in direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. Sparse arrays such as nested arrays, super nested arrays, and coprime arrays have large degrees of freedom (DOFs). They can estimate large number of sources greater than the number of elements. They also have closed form expressions for antenna locations and the achievable DOFs. The multi-level prime array (MLPA) uses multiple uniform linear subarrays where the number of elements in the subarrays are pairwise coprime integers. The array achieves large DOFs and it has closed form expressions for the antenna locations and the required aperture size. For a given number of subarrays and total number of elements, there are different design alternatives. This paper finds the optimum number of elements within each subarray and the optimized ordered inter-element spacing. In almost all cases, we have found that a unique configuration jointly realizes the maximum number of unique lags and the maximum number of consecutive lags.