Design of an S-Band Phased Array with Modified Dipoles

Abstract

A wideband, low cross-polarization, high-gain, and wide-angle scanning antenna array is presented in this paper. The antenna array contains 8 subarrays in the horizontal dimension, and each subarray contains 4 unit cells. A two-side printed dipole with an amendatory equivalent circuit model is adopted, and the metal vias are introduced in the element design to ameliorate the cross-polarization level. A radome, acting as the wide-angle impedance matching layer, is introduced to achieve wide-angle scanning. A prototype of a 4 × 8 array is fabricated and measured. The results show that the operating bandwidth of aperture efficiency (BWAE) above 60% is about 26.7% from 2.6 GHz to 3.4 GHz. The measured scanning loss in the H-plane is 2.7 dB when scanning up to 60° with active voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) <3, and the gain can achieve 21 dB at 3 GHz with a cross-polarization level below −30 dB at all angles.