Design of a wideband and low-profile monopulse array fabricated by 3-d metal printing technique

A wideband and low-profile waveguide-based monopulse array is presented. The monopulse array mainly consists of three portions: an antenna array, a waveguide corporate-feed network and a monopulse comparator. The key challenge exists in the design of a wideband monopulse comparator to be commensurate to the feed-network and the radiating array while considering the low-profile characteristic. As the array is a complicated multilayer structure, a 3-D metal-direct-printing technique is adopted to fabricate the whole array instead of conventional machining methods. The monopulse array is expected to achieve satisfactory performance with the help of this special printing approach.