Antenna arrays with high directivity, low side-lobe level, and null control in desired direction and whip antenna with wider bandwidth both need to be optimized to meet different needs of communication systems. A new natural heuristic algorithm simulating social behavior of grasshoppers, grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA), is applied to electromagnetic field as a new effective technology to solve the antenna optimization problem for the first time. Its algorithm is simple and has no gradient mechanism, can effectively avoid falling into local optimum, and is suitable for single-objective and multiobjective optimization problems. GOA is used to optimize the side lobe suppression, null depth, and notch control of arbitrary linear array and then used to optimize the loading and matching network of 10-meter HF broadband whip antenna compared with other algorithms. The results show that GOA has more advantages in side-lobe suppression, null depth, and notch control of linear array than other algorithms and has better broadband optimization performance for HF whip antenna. The pattern synthesis and antenna broadband optimization based on GOA provide a new and effective method for antenna performance optimization.

A direction-finding algorithm by the time-modulated array (TMA) is proposed for binary phase shift keying (BPSK) signals. In the proposed scheme, only two antenna elements and a single RF channel are required, and the switch period has no relation with the symbol period of the BPSK signal. Numeric simulations are provided to examine the performance of the proposed scheme, and a two-element TMA test platform is constructed to verify its effectiveness.

The critical advantage of passive microwave imaging is that it can be used in all-day and in low visibility conditions, such as hazes, fogs, clouds, smokes, and sandstorms. In this article, the ground-based passive interferometric microwave sensor (PIMS) is proposed to detect civil aircrafts, especially in low visibility conditions. The fundamental of civil aircraft detection by a ground-based PIMS is introduced and analyzed. Numerical simulations are performed to assess its feasibility and detection performance, and the impact of the low visibility weather is analyzed and discussed. To verify the practicability of civil aircraft detection by the ground-based PIMS, a series of experiments have been performed by a ground-based X-band PIMS, and a data processing procedure is introduced, which contains a target detection algorithm. Experimental results have demonstrated that the civil aircrafts can be accurately detected and consecutively tracked by the ground-based PIMS using the target detection algorithm. Meanwhile, a mirrored TB phenomenon, the TB change, and an application scheme are analyzed and discussed. As a conclusion, the ground-based PIMS can be considered as a powerful complementary tool for civil aircraft detection.

The carrier of the digital watermark expands from audio signals to radio frequency (RF) signals. Unlike audio signals, RF signals, such as the watermark transmission carrier, must be correctly demodulated with the watermark signals so that the distortion of the digital carrier embedded with the watermark is associated with the change in bit error rate. Based on the spread spectrum watermarking scheme, the distortion of the digital carrier signal is redefined, and the channel capacity expression of the watermarking scheme is derived. In addition, the optimal parameters to achieve the maximal channel capacity are discussed, and the constraint relation between the channel capacity and the allowable distortion is investigated.

Based on the existing 5G NR system, a physical-layer watermarking scheme is proposed to enhance the physical-layer security in 5G communication systems. A new scheme for watermark generation is proposed to improve the robustness of the authentication. The watermark signal is embedded in the phase of the demodulation reference signal (DMRS), and the influence of the watermark on the demodulation reference signal is reduced by designing the encoder of the watermark. Simulation results show that the watermarking scheme proposed in this paper has good anti-noise and anti-frequency-offset performance, and has good feasibility both in the Gaussian channel and Rayleigh fading channel.