Patent 7466287 was granted and assigned to Lockheed Martin on December, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An array antenna is arranged in an innovative sparse trifilar configuration. The antenna elements forming the array antenna are arranged to form three non-linear arrays. The antenna elements are approximately aligned to a triangular lattice structure with the antenna elements of each non-linear array occupying adjacent lattice positions. The three non-linear arrays are separated from each other by vacant lattice positions, thereby making the configuration a sparse array.