Design considerations for low sidelobe microstrip arrays

The factors affecting the realizable sidelobe performance of microstrip arrays are discussed and quantified. These include excitation amplitude and phase accuracies, mutual coupling, diffraction effects, positioning errors, and errors due to imperfect element matching and feed network isolation. It is shown that low-sidelobe microstrip arrays require a very tight tolerance on the resonant frequencies of the elements, and the elimination of spurious radiation from the feed network. Cross-polarization and surface wave effects are discussed. An experimental 16-element microstrip array prototype incorporated these considerations into the design, and achieved a -35 dB relative sidelobe level