A Wideband Scanning Circularly Polarized Array Antenna Based on the Shorted Transmission Line Model

Abstract

Due to the huge potential of application in the communications, electronic jamming, and radar fields, circularly polarized (CP) array antennas with wide axial ratio (AR) scanning performance at wide frequency bandwidth have received great attention. A wideband scanning CP planar array antenna built by new, tightly coupled dipole array (CP-TCDA) elements, which have achieved promising results in terms of both scanning AR bandwidth and angle range in all scanning planes, is presented in this paper. Based on the shorted transmission line model, a CP-TCDA element arranged along the ±45° direction is constructed, which can shift the middle-frequency scanning blind zone out of band and thus obtain a wideband scanning AR bandwidth. Furthermore, the proposed CP-TCDA element adopts four shorting pins and four square parasitic strips, which improve wide-angle CP performance for xz-plane and diagonal-plane scans, respectively. An 8×8 left-handed CP planar array antenna based on the proposed CP-TCDA elements is designed and prototyped. The results show that the array antenna is able to operate over a 3:1 (4-12 GHz) overlapping bandwidth, and it meets the requirements of AR < 3 dB and active VSWR < 2.9 within a ±45° scanning angle range.INDEX TERMS array antenna, circularly polarized, phased antenna, scanning antennas

An Ultrathin Low-Profile Tightly Coupled Dipole Array Fed by Compact Zigzagging Baluns

“…Its equivalent circuit model is given and its Table 4 summarizes the comparison of the proposed TCDA and other reported stateof-the-art TCDAs. The work in [9,10] mainly focused on the circularly polarized TCDA, while [18] proposed an improved balanced wideband impedance transformer feed. In [19], a kind of tightly coupled balun and WAIM were utilized to improve the electromagnetic characteristics of the TCDA.…”

“…There have been numerous investigations into improving the performance of TCDAs. Firstly, some researchers have presented many novel antenna element configurations [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. A kind of magneto-electric (ME) dipole structure [4,5] has been developed for TCDAs.…”

“…A kind of magneto-electric (ME) dipole structure [4,5] has been developed for TCDAs. Some two-dimensional planar arms [6][7][8][9][10] for TCDAs have been designed. Furthermore, some three-dimensional vibrators [11][12][13][14][15] have been illustrated.…”

Tightly Coupled Ultra-Wideband Phased-Array Implemented by Three-Dimensional Inkjet Printing Technique

“…Ben Munk proposed an ultrawideband (UWB) phased array antenna based on the strong coupling effect between elements [2]. This is the proposed for the first time and design method that is fundamentally different from the traditional phased array technology, whose core idea is to intentionally increase the mutual coupling between elements in the array [3], and successfully developed an ultra-wideband 2GHz-18GHz phased array antenna prototype using this mechanism.…”