Corporate feed design for microstrip arrays

A design technique for an embedded microstrip corporate feed is presented. The aim of the design is to shape each corporate feed junction to achieve a tapered and in-phase output current distribution. From this, a Dolph-Chebyshev array sum pattern may be constructed. In the experiments, the designed corporate feed is used to excite a five-element equispaced linear array of overlay microstrip dipoles. It is found both theoretically and experimentally that a 20-dB Dolph-Chebyshev broadside sum pattern can be synthesized in the H-plane at 8.5 GHz. Mutual coupling among the dipoles is included in this analysis. The pattern degradation due to manufacturing tolerances on the alignment between the feed network and the dipole array is discussed