Investigation on the performance of a compact microstrip monopulse antenna array

A microstrip monopulse antenna array has been designed and manufactured. The array, the monopulse comparator and the feed network are placed on the same layer resulting in a very compact structure. But the compact structure may bring some limitations to the improvement of the array performance. In this paper, several factors that affect the array performance are investigated which may serve as the guideline of the design. The -16 dB side lobe level for the sum pattern and 25 dB null depth for the difference pattern have been achieved in the experiment. The simulation and the analysis show that there is still a possibility to improve the array performance.