Abstract
Targeted communication is made possible using beamforming. It is extensively employed in many disciplines involving electromagnetic waves, including arrayed ultrasonic, optical, and high-speed wireless communication. Conventional beam steering often requires the addition of separate active amplitude and phase control units after each radiating element. The high-power consumption and complexity of large-scale phased arrays can be overcome by reducing the number of active controllers, pushing beamforming into satellite communications and deep space exploration. To address this, we propose a phased array antenna design based on dimensionality-reduced cascaded angle offset phased array (DRCAO-PAA). By applying singular value decomposition (SVD) to compress the coefficient matrix of phase shifts, our method reduces the number of active controllers while maintaining beam-steering performance. Furthermore, the suggested DRCAO-PAA was sing the singular value deposition concept. For practical application the particle swarm optimization algorithm and deep neural network Transformer were adopted. Based on this theoretical framework, an experimental board was built to verify the theory. Finally, the 16/8/4 -array beam steering was demonstrated by using 4/3/2 active controllers, respectively.
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Data availability
The data that support the plots within this paper and the other finding of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code availability
The code supporting the findings of this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The custom scripts were developed using MATLAB/Python and are specific to the experiments described in this manuscript.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of China (No.2025ZD1302100).
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Z. Cao conceived the idea of DRCAO-PAA, the use of AI to empower the LIVG search process and led the theoretical analysis and the numerical simulation. S. Xia led the experimental research, designed the AI algorithm, and performed the numerical simulation. M. Zhao contributes to the theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and design of the antenna array. Q. Ma led and performed the design and realization of the phase shifter board. X. Zhang and L. Yang led and performed the research on the antenna array. H. Chung contributed to the design of the phase shifter board. F. Li and Yazhi Pi supervised the research on the compatibility in communication system. Ad Reniers led the far-field pattern measurement of DRCAO-PAA. A.M.J. Koonen led the whole research and guided the paper writing. All authors contributed to the data discussion and wrote the paper.
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Communications Engineering thanks Hong Soo Park and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: [Miranda Vinay, Anastasiia Vasylchenkova, Rosamund Daw]. [A peer review file is available].
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Xia, S., Zhao, M., Ma, Q. et al. Dimensionality reduced antenna array for beamforming/steering. Commun Eng (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-026-00588-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-026-00588-6
