The invention discloses a discretized region scanning subarray-level sparse optimization method and system, and belongs to the technical field of array antenna design, and the method comprises the following steps: S1, discretizing an initial population; s2, carrying out region scanning processing; and s3, optimization processing. When the method and the system are applied to sub-array-level sparseoptimization of a large-scale circular aperture antenna, under the condition that the sub-array spacing meets the spacing requirement, the optimization time is greatly reduced, the sidelobe level isreduced, a new way is provided for rapidly solving effective position arrangement of array elements under the specific array element spacing limitation condition, the diversity of a solution set in the optimization process is improved, the probability of finding the optimal solution is improved, and local convergence of the optimization algorithm is effectively avoided; and when the designed arrayantenna is applied to a large-scale radar system, the radar has the advantages of long operating distance, high resolution, low cost, light weight, high engineering realizability and the like, and isworthy of popularization and application.