Development of an electromagnetic macro-model for reconfigurable array application

This paper presents the development and the experimental characterization of an electromagnetic array macro-model, taking into account the strong mutual coupling between the microstrip antennas. Without any complex electromagnetic calculation, this macro-modeling approach allows the calculation of necessary weights (amplitudes and phases), in order to obtain an optimum radiation pattern (high gain with low side lobes levels), while taking into account the calculated matching impedance (ZL≠50Ω) of each antenna in the array according to the frequency and the pointing angle.