Isophoric Array Antennas with a Low Number of Control Points: a `Size Tapered' Solution

We propose a new architecture for array antennas able to achieve a high-gain performance by using a low number of elements and uniform-amplitude excitations. The solution is realized through a fast and deterministic design technique able to accurately emulate, by exploiting only the feeds' dimensions as degrees of freedom of the synthesis, `ideal' continuous aperture sources fulfilling at best the assigned directivity requirements. The given theory is supported by numerical examples concerning the synthesis of isophoric direct radiating arrays devoted to a multibeam coverage of Europe from a geostationary satellite.