Method for producing a direction-finding antenna array and antenna array produced according to such a method

A method for manufacturing a direction-finding antenna array in two dimensions comprising at least three antennas, wherein comprising a phase of determining the optimal configuration of said array from among a list of possible configurations, a configuration being defined by the gain, the direction of pointing and the position within said array of each of said antennas, said phase comprises at least:

• a step of defining a reference antenna network, said network covering a surface having a dimension in elevation and/or in bearing inversely proportional respectively to a level of precision required in elevation and/or in bearing for the estimation of the directions of arrival of the incident waves, and comprising a plurality of elementary antennas, said elementary antennas being distributed according to a regular mesh, the distance separating two contiguous elementary antennas being substantially equal to the half-wavelength associated with the maximum frequency of a span of frequencies of interest, the number of antennas of said network being greater than the number of antennas of said array, the spacing between the extreme antennas of said network being greater than or equal to the spacing between the extreme antennas of said array along the bearing axis and/or the elevation axis,
• a step of searching for configurations to be taken into consideration with the help of predetermined constraints so as to establish a list of configurations to be taken into consideration,
• a step of quantifying the maximum level of ambiguities of each of the configurations of said list with the help of a correlation function so as to associate an evaluation quantity with each of said configurations,
• a step of searching for the configuration exhibiting the lowest evaluation quantity, said configuration being the optimal configuration.