Design and performance of large phased arrays of aperture stacked patches

Author

Waterhouse, Rod B.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Commun. & Electron. Eng., RMIT Univ., Melbourne, Vic., Australia

Volume

49

Issue

2

fYear

2001

fDate

2/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

292

Lastpage

297

Abstract

We present a technique to achieve large-bandwidth and low-profile printed phased arrays that can give good sky coverage; that is, a reasonable scan range and, therefore, may be suited to applications such as radio astronomy. The microstrip arrays consist of aperture stacked patches and can exhibit VSWR <2:1 bandwidths in excess of an octave over a scanning range of ±45° in the principal planes. A thorough investigation of these microstrip phased arrays is given using an infinite array analysis and a design strategy to achieve broad-band characteristics is proposed. It is shown that the element spacing and the dielectric material thicknesses are critical in optimizing the scan/bandwidth performance

Keywords

antenna phased arrays; electric impedance; microstrip antenna arrays; scanning antennas; VSWR; broadband characteristics; design strategy; dielectric material thickness; element spacing; infinite array analysis; input impedance; large phased arrays; low-profile printed phased arrays; microstrip arrays; microstrip phased arrays; scan range; scan/bandwidth performance optimization; sky coverage; Apertures; Application specific processors; Bandwidth; Costs; Microstrip antenna arrays; Microstrip antennas; Phased arrays; Polarization; Radio astronomy; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-926X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/8.914296

Filename

914296