Wideband, wide scanning conformal arrays with practical integrated feeds

A key challenge in designing wideband dipole arrays is developing a wideband balun that is sufficiently compact to fit within a single unit cell. A new technique has recently been developed which uses the the reactance of a compact balun as an impedance matching network to improve the bandwidth of a Tightly Coupled Dipole Array (TCDA). In this paper, we apply this technique to two TCDA designs, with and without resistive loading. The first design uses a compact balun and low-loss materials to achieve 7.2:1 bandwidth, with VSWR<;2.6:1 while scanning to ±45° in all planes. The second design uses a similar balun design along with a resistive sheet placed below the dipoles, achieving a bandwidth of 14.2:1 with VSWR<;2.4:1 at broadside, and >70% efficiency across most of the band.