13th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2019)
Review of CPM for Array Clustering – A Unified
Approach to Subarraying
Giacomo Oliveri1, Giorgio Gottardi1, and Andrea Massa1,2
1
ELEDIA Research Center (ELEDIA@UniTN - University of Trento), Trento, Italy, andrea.massa@unitn.it
2
ELEDIA Research Center (ELEDIA@UC3M - Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Madrid, Spain, andrea.massa@tsc.uc3m.es
Abstract—In this paper, a sub-arraying method which
jointly deals with amplitudes and phases of the element
excitations for reducing the number of control points (namely,
amplifiers and phase shifters) is presented. A synthesis tool
based on an excitation matching strategy for jointly defining
the subarray architecture and the complex subarray
excitations is developed. The k-means algorithm is employed to
determine the compromise solution which minimize the least
square distance with respect to the reference excitations.
Index Terms—phased arrays, subarraying, contiguous
partition method, k-means method.
I. INTRODUCTION
Phased array antennas represent a key technology for
both modern communication and radar applications. Thanks
to their high reconfiguration capabilities, these antennas turn
out to be the natural candidates to realize reliable and
efficient solutions suitable for 5G and small-satellite
communications [1], [2]. However, the high costs of fully-
populated solutions where each element of the array is
equipped with expensive electronic devices (i.e., amplifiers,
phase shifters, time-delay units) lead to the search of
alternative solutions based on sub-arrayed architectures,
which allow one to obtain good trade-offs between feeding
network complexity and radiation performance [3].
In the past years, several methodologies have been proposed
to properly define the grouping of the elements into
subarrays based on analytic [4], [5], stochastic [6] or hybrid
approaches [7]-[9]. Among these, an effective synthesis tool
for jointly defining the sub-array configurations and the sub-
array amplitude values exploiting the Fisher’s grouping
theory has been proposed in [10]. Thanks to a suitable
representation of the solution space as a non-complete binary
tree [11] where each path represents a contiguous partition,
the number of possible solutions has been reduced,
guaranteeing the presence of an optimal one (i.e., the
subarray configuration which minimizes the distance
between optimal and compromise excitations). Hybrid
techniques combined with evolutionary optimization
algorithms to enhance the search for the optimal solution
[12], [13], or combined with convex optimization [14], [15]
in order to find the best excitations for further reducing the
sidelobe level, have been also presented. Moreover,
customized strategies have been successively developed for
designing sub-arrayed antennas affording multiple patterns
[16], multi-function phase-clustered arrays [17] and
multibeam-on-receive scanning arrays [18].
In this work a further advance is proposed and the
simultaneous definition of the subarray configuration and of
the compromise amplitudes and phases through an excitation
matching strategy is addressed. The optimal solution which
guarantees the minimum – in a least square – approximation
error in matching the reference complex excitations is
determined by means of the k-means algorithm.
II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION
Let us consider a linear array of N elements equally-
spaced by d and aligned along the x -axis. Such elements
are assumed to be grouped into Q non-uniform and non-
overlapping sub-arrays so that Qq1 N q  N , being N q the
number of elements belonging to the q-th subarray,
q  1,...,Q . Q  N ). Each subarray is equipped with an
amplifier and a phase shifter providing a complex excitation
I q , q  1,...,Q , being  q and q the amplitude and phase
coefficients, respectively. The arising array factor term is
given by
Q  Q 
AF ( )   
q 1
I q   cn q e j[ k ( n 1) d sin  ] ,
 q 1 
(1)
in which cn  C is an integer number identifying the
membership of the n-th ( n  1,..., N ) array element to the q-th
( q  1,...,Q ) subarray, C  cn   0 1  cn  Q; n  1,..., N  ,
 cn q is the Kronecker delta function giving  c n q  1 when
c n  q and  c n q  0 otherwise, and k  2 /  is the
wavenumber, 0 being the wavelength corresponding to the
working frequency. The proposed method is aimed at
determining the optimal grouping (described through the
vector Copt ) of the array elements into a fixed number of
Q subarrays, exploiting an excitation matching strategy, so
that the following metric turns out to be minimized
N
1
v
2
 (C )  n   n (C ) , (2)
N n 1
 13th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2019)

in which vn ( n  1,..., N ) is the reference complex excitation 2


K
AF ( k )  AFref ( k )
associated to the n-th element and  k 1
(6)

K

  AF ( k )
Q N
 c n q vn k 1
q 1 n 1
 n (C )  (3)
 
Q N
 . where AFref ( k ) is the reference array factor evaluated in
q 1 n 1 c n q
 k , k  1,..., K , K being the number of samples. The pattern
The excitation matching strategy, exploiting the iterative k-
parameters corresponding to a set of results obtained for
means algorithm, is based on the following steps (i being the
Q  12,16, 20, 24,28,32 ( Q  32 represents the reference
iteration index)
 Step 0: Initialization ( i  0 ) – Definition of the initial solution) are reported in Tab. I.
subarraying. More in detail, the barycenters of the Q
subarrays are randomly initialized: I q  e j , where for
each q-th subarray  and  are randomly chosen
within the ranges   0 : 1 and   0 : 2  ,
respectively;
 Step 1: Assignment Step ( i  i  1 ) – In this step, the n-
th array element is assigned to the subarray providing
the minimum Euclidean distance between its barycentre
and the n-th reference excitation value ( n  1,..., N ),
cn  q  vn  I q  vn  I j , j ,1  j  Q (4)

 Step 2: Update Step – In this step, the cluster

barycenters are updated considering the elements
belonging to each cluster, (a)
N N
Iq  
n 1
cn q v n  n 1
cn q , q  1,..., Q; (5)

 Step 3: Stopping Criterion – When the subarray

members no longer change (i.e., Step 2 does not provide
any movement of an array element from a subarray to
another one) or the iteration index exceeds the
maximum number of iterations ( i  I max ) the
convergence is reached, and the algorithm stops.
Otherwise, Steps 1-3 are iteratively repeated.
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS
A representative example selected among a wide set of
numerical results is presented in this Section. An array of
N  32 ideal and isotropic elements equi-spaced by
d   / 2 is considered. The excitation amplitudes have been
defined in order to generate a Taylor pattern with sidelobe
level equal to SLLref  25 [dB] and n  5 , whereas the
phase coefficients have been set so that the pointing angle is
oriented toward 0  10 [deg]. The arising element
excitations are shown within the complex plane in Fig. 1(a)
whereas the corresponding radiation pattern is reported in
Fig. 1(b).
The figure of merit used to analyze the achieved results are
the sidelobe level ( SLL ), the half-power beamwidth
( HPBW ), the maximum directivity ( Dmax ), the excitation
matching value (  ) and a pattern matching term defined as
follows:
(a)
Fig. 1. Taylor pattern, SLL  25 [dB], n  5 : (a) Reference
excitations and (b) arising radiation pattern.
It is worth noticing that a good trade-off is given by the
solution with Q  24 subarrays. Indeed, despite such a
solution exhibits higher sidelobes compared to the reference
solution (i.e., SLL Q24  21.87 [dB] vs. SLL Q32  25.00
[dB]) and a slightly reduced maximum directivity
( Dmax Q24  17.63 [dB] vs. Dmax Q24  17.66 [dB], the
array architecture turns out to be significantly simplified,
with a reduction in terms of control points of
100  ( N  Q) N  25% . Table I shows that a further
decrease of the number of control points a lead to additional
degradation on the radiation pattern, whatever the considered
figure of merit.
 13th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2019)

TABLE I. PATTERN PARAMETERS. funded by Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and

SLL [dB] HPBW [deg] D [dB]   International Cooperation, Directorate General for Cultural
-2
and Economic Promotion and Innovation, and the Project
Q=12 -16.06 3.74 17.45 6.29×10 3.41×10-2
“WATERTECH - Smart Community per lo Sviluppo e
Q=16 -17.67 3.78 17.56 3.23×10-2 1.75×10-2 l’Applicazione di Tecnologie di Monitoraggio Innovative per
le Reti di Distribuzione Idrica negli usi idropotabili ed
Q=20 -19.64 3.77 17.63 1.54×10-2 8.38×10-3
agricoli” (Grant no. SCN_00489) funded by the Italian
Q=24 -21.87 3.80 17.63 6.85×10-3 3.72×10-3 Ministry of Education, University, and Research within the
Program “Smart cities and communities and Social
Q=28 -23.76 3.78 17.67 1.55×10-3 8.42×10-4
Innovation” (CUP: E44G14000060008).
Q=32 -25.00 3.80 17.66 0.0 0.0
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