Three-dimensional phased array antenna analysis and simulation

The beam width of planar phased array antenna becomes large as increasing of the scanning angle, so that the scanning range is limited. Conformal phased array antennas might be applied to improve the scanning range. However, the element distribution of a conformal phased array is not regularization, so the analysis is very complicated. In this article, a three-dimensional (3D) array antenna is investigated and implemented on Matlab. 3D array antenna can form different types of arrays to scan any space through choosing different elements. This paper introduces a general direction function of 3D array antenna and simulations of three typical types of arrays formed: diagonal planar array, trapezoidal array and curved surface array. It also investigates the differences of the beam patterns.