Elimination of impedance anomalies in single- and dual-polarized endfire tapered slot phased arrays

A method to eliminate bandwidth-limiting impedance anomalies or resonances in stripline-fed single- and dual-polarized tapered slot phased arrays is presented. For dual-polarized arrays, others have shown that the resonance with the lowest frequency is related to a cavity constituted by the dielectric region of the tapered slot element. Simulations have been performed to test if this cavity model also predicts the remaining resonances. It was found that the cavity model predicts some but not all of the resonances. However, it was found that all resonances in both single- and dual-polarized arrays have some dependence on the dielectric region. The resonances are effectively suppressed by introducing plated through vias in the element. The vias are positioned along the edges of the slotline, slotline cavity, stripline, and stripline stub. The analysis is performed with the finite-difference time-domain method by considering a unit cell in an infinite array