Ka‐band phased patch array antenna integrated with a PET‐controlled phase shifter

In this article, a 4 × 4 linear‐phased patch array antenna, consisting of four 1 × 4 patch subarrays and a true time‐delay multiline phase shifter, is proposed on a thin film liquid crystal polymer substrate at Ka‐band. The patch antenna is designed with a gain of 6 dBi at 35 GHz and a bandwidth of 23% centered at 35 GHz. To enhance the gain and symmetrize the beam patterns of the 4 × 4 array, a 1 × 4 patch subarray in the E‐plane was designed and characterized. The subarray produces an enhanced gain of 11 dBi and a wide beamwidth of ±38° in the H‐plane for beam steering. The proposed phase shifter comprises a 1 × 4 microstrip line power splitter and a piezoelectric transducer‐controlled phase perturber. A large phase variation of up to 370° and a low insertion loss of less than 2 dB were demonstrated for the phase shifter at Ka‐band. The integrated phased array attains a gain of 15.6 dBi, and a continuous true‐time delay beam steering of up to 33 ± 1° from 31 to 39 GHz. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:199–208, 2016.     

Wide‐angle scanning circular polarization phased array based on polarization rotation technology

A wide‐beam circular polarization (CP) antenna and a wide‐angle scanning phased array based on novel polarization rotation reflective surface (PRRS) are proposed. The CP wide‐beam pattern is obtained by the combination of the radiation wave from the patch antenna and the orthogonal reflected wave from the PRRS with a 90° phase difference. The proposed CP wide‐beam antenna obtains the patterns with the 3‐dB beamwidth more than 136° and the axial ratio (AR) beamwidth more than 132° in the xoz‐plane. Furthermore, an eight‐element phased array based on the wide‐beam CP antenna element is also developed. The measured results show that the main beam of the array can scan from ?65° to 65° with a gain fluctuation less than 3 dB and the ARs at every scanning angle less than 3 dB.     

Circularly polarized 4 × 8 stacked patch antenna phased array with enhanced bandwidth for commercial drones

This paper demonstrates the design procedure of a 4 × 8 phased array antenna. Initially, a unit element in multilayer topology with orthogonal slots in the ground plane to couple electromagnetic energy is designed. Then, a stacked patch with truncated edges is placed on the top thick substrate layer to enhance the bandwidth to 600 MHz. This multilayered stacked patch unit element is then used to design a 1 × 4 and 4 × 8 slot coupled stacked patch array. On the bottom side, a novel feedline structure is designed to provide a 90 ^o phase difference at the antenna feed for the circular polarization. The phase difference is achieved in the feedline structure using a quarter wavelength ( λ_g/4 ) difference in the lengths. After the numerical validation, both 1 × 4 and 4 × 8 stacked patch antenna arrays are fabricated to validate the simulations. The final 4 × 8 array achieved the target specification of an active reflection of less than ?10 dB over 2.4 to 3.0 GHz, axial ratio of less than 3 dB, and stable radiation pattern over the complete band. In addition, beam scanning characteristics of the proposed stacked patch antenna arrays are also verified. The prototype resulted a peak gain of 19.5 dB at 2.7 GHz, 3‐dB beamwidth around 12 ^o in the xz‐plane, and scanning range of 90 ^o . Overall, good agreement between measured and simulated results showed that the proposed designed array capable of providing 600 MHz is an excellent candidate for the radar communication, small commercial drones, and synthetic aperture radar applications.     

Frequency‐dependent behavioral‐model‐based nonlinear analysis and design of a low‐profile transmit active phased array antenna

Design and behavioral‐model‐based nonlinear analysis of a 3‐GHz active‐phased array antenna (APAA) are presented. Four nonlinear power amplifiers are employed in the output ports of the feeding network (FN) and analyzed based on a 5‐order polynomial model with frequency‐dependent coefficients. The FN is based on 4‐port new Gysel power dividers and combiners arranged in such a way to feed the array with Gaussian‐like amplitude and in‐phase distributions. Beam steering capability is obtained in 2 directions by a new technique including a phase shifter and an amplitude controller (AC). The features result in a low‐profile APAA whose design and fabrication complexity and cost are reduced. Single and 2‐tone power tests are performed to develop analytical expressions in nonlinear region for array factor as a function of the model, FN and the phase and ACs. A similar system with frequency‐independent model is also analyzed for comparison in terms of scan loss, beamwidth, side‐lobe level, beam position, and gain. A microstrip array antenna including the power amplifiers, pre‐amplifiers, AC, delay‐line‐based phase shifters and Gysels is fabricated and measured. The simulation results at the single and dual tones and the intermodulation products are presented which have a good agreement with the measurements.     

Design and evaluation of a vertically integrated passive two‐dimensional beam switching antenna array at 60 GHz

A millimeter‐wave two‐dimensional (2D) beam switching planar microstrip patch antenna array excited by a 4 × 4 substrate‐integrated waveguide Butler matrix (BM) is presented in this article. The BM architecture is modified to feed the planar array in a vertically integrated multilayer design to minimize parasitic effects due to junction discontinuity and reduce the radio frequency (RF) front‐end footprint. This feed architecture enables the designer to control the phased array inputs to achieve a set of beam directions in four quadrants of radiation space at a desired elevation angle. For verification of beam switching via over‐the‐air measurements at 60 GHz, a bench‐top anechoic chamber with proper transmitter and receiver antenna positioners was designed and fabricated using in‐house laboratory resources. 2D beam steering was confirmed in the intended four quadrants of radiation space at ?₀ = 50°, 140°, 220°, and 300° and θ₀ = 30° ± 5°, meeting the design specifications with a very good margin. Each switched beam demonstrated between 5 and 6 dBi gain at 60 GHz, which is within 1 dB deviation from the simulated results.     

Decoupling antenna array with X‐shaped strip

Manipulating mutual coupling between antenna array elements is always a critical essential in designing phased arrays. In this article, an X‐shaped strip is applied to decouple a five‐element E‐plane microstrip antenna array, whose adjacent elements' center‐to‐center spacing is only 0.45 λ₀. Simulation and measurement results reveal that the proposed array employing the loaded structure exhibits excellent decoupling capability, as in comparison to the reference array, impedance of every port is well matched, mutual coupling between both adjacent elements and nonadjacent ones is efficiently reduced and radiation patterns of every individual patch are markedly corrected. Besides, when beam scanning is performed, the proposed array is equipped with higher gain and lower SLL. The X‐shaped strip predicts a promising application in phased array and a large‐scale array.     

Beam scanning annular slot‐ring antenna array with via‐fence for wireless power transfer

Wireless power transfer has been the field of research for many decades, and with technological advancement and increase in wireless mobile devices, the future of wireless power transfer technology is very promising. The major requirement of wireless power transfer is an efficient and compact antenna array with high gain and flawless scanning performance. In this article, a 4 × 8 element array is proposed with a gain of 18 dB and scanning capability of ±45^° in azimuth and elevation plane at 5.8 GHz. The overall size of the array is 100 mm × 200 mm. The element separation in the array is only 0.48 λ. There was strong mutual coupling due to smaller separation, which has been minimized with the application of via‐fence around the antenna element. A dual feed circularly polarized annular slot‐ring antenna is proposed and analyzed with via‐fence to develop an array of 4 × 8 elements. The antenna array reflection coefficient obtained is less than 20 dB for different scan angles and the gain of the array obtained is also within 2 dB for ±45^° scan angles.     

Novel ultra‐compact two‐dimensional waveguide‐based metasurface for electromagnetic coupling reduction of microstrip antenna array

A novel ultracompact two‐dimensional (2D) waveguide‐based metasurface is proposed herein and applied for the first time to reduce mutual coupling in antenna array for multiple‐input multiple‐output applications. The unit cell of the proposed 2D waveguide‐based metasurface is ultracompact (8.6 mm × 4.8 mm, equal to λ₀/14.2 × λ₀/25.5) mainly due to the symmetrical spiral lines etched on the ground. The metasurface exhibits a bandgap with two transmission zeros attributing to the negative permeability in the vicinity of magnetic resonance and the negative permittivity in the vicinity of electric resonance. Taking advantage of these two features, a microstrip antenna array is then designed, fabricated, and measured by embedding an 8 × 1 array of the well‐engineered 2D waveguide‐based metasurface elements between two closely spaced (9.2 mm, equal to λ₀/13.3) H‐plane coupled rectangular patches. There is good agreement between the simulated and measured results, indicating that the metasurface effectively reduces antenna mutual coupling by more than 11.18 dB and improves forward gain. The proposed compact structure has one of the highest reported decoupling efficiencies among similar periodic structures with comparable dimensions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:789–794, 2015.     

Design of a subarray with special radiation pattern for low profile wide‐angle scanning phased array

A low profile subarray with a special radiation pattern for the wide‐angle H‐plane scanning phased array is presented. Five parallel dipoles located above a metal ground serve as the radiator. The differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used to obtain the weights for a special radiation pattern, which is realized by a corresponding feed network. The overall dimension of the proposed subarray is only 0.55λ₀ × 0.55λ₀ × 0.14λ₀. The prototype is fabricated and measured, and the measurement results are consistent with the simulation results. Because of the special radiation pattern and compact size, this subarray is suitable as an element in the wide‐angle scanning phased array. A uniform linear array consisting of five proposed subarrays is built in high frequency structural simulator, and the simulated results show that the main beam can scan nearly from ?70° to +70° in the H‐plane with a gain fluctuation less than 3 dB.     

Modelling of probe‐fed cylindrical dielectric resonator antennas

Probe‐fed cylindrical dielectric resonator antennas (CDRAs), with dielectric constant ϵ_r=37 and supported by an infinite ground plane, are simulated using the finite element method. From this, closed form expressions are obtained for the resonant frequency, directivity, and unloaded Q‐factor, applicable to a wide range of antenna dimensions. The effects of (a) the finite circular ground plane, (b) the air gap between the CDRA and the ground plane, (c) the air gap between the CDRA and the feed probe, and (d) the length of the probe on these parameters are studied for a particular CDRA and appropriate correction factors are derived. The simulated results are compared with those obtained experimentally for various ground planes, probe lengths, and probe spacings. The closed form expressions provide good agreement with the experiments in resonant frequency, unloaded Q‐factor, and impedance bandwidth, but less accurate prediction in antenna directivity for the specified range of parameters. ©1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 9: 2–13, 1999     

Wideband microstrip‐fed tapered slot antennas and phased array

Two wideband tapered slot antennas are designed, fabricated, and tested. The first antenna, which is fabricated on a high dielectric constant substrate (?_r = 10.2), shows a measured return loss of better than 10 dB from 1.6 to 12.4 GHz (7.7:1 bandwidth), and an antenna gain varying from 3.6 to 7.8 dBi. The second antenna is built on a low dielectric constant substrate (?_r = 2.2), and demonstrates return loss of better than 10 dB from 1.8 to 15.2 GHz (8.4:1 bandwidth). The second antenna also has improved antenna gain, from 5 to 15.6 dBi, and is used to build a wideband 1 × 4 H‐plane phased array with a total gain of 9–17 dBi and a beam steering angle of ±15° from 3 to 12 GHz. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2007.     

A WiMAX circularly polarized antenna array using slot‐coupling feeding technique

In this letter, we present a circular polarization antenna array using the novel slot‐coupling feeding technique. This antenna includes eight elements which are installed in line, each array element is fed by means of two microstrip lines with equal amplitude and phase rotation of 90°. The feeding microstrip lines are coupled to a square patch through a square‐ring slot realized in the feeding network ground plane. With the presence of the slots, this antenna array is able to cover the range of frequency of 3 GHz to 4 GHz. The size of the proposed antenna array is 7λ × 1.8λ × 0.4λ. The measured gain is 15.2 dBi and the bandwidth of S11< ?10 dB is 1 GHz (3–4 GHz, 28%). The antenna array is suited for the WiMAX applications. With the use of slot‐coupling feeding technique, the measured bandwidth for axial ratio < 3 dB is about 24% in the WiMAX frequency band (3.3–3.8GHz). The measured HPBW of the y–z planes is larger than 62°. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:567–574, 2016.     

Full‐wave analysis of printed leaky‐wave phased arrays

In this work, we propose a full‐wave numerical approach for efficient analysis and design of printed leaky‐wave phased arrays. The proposed technique is based on the method of moments in the spectral domain applied to a leaky structure in a periodic environment. The implementation exploits suitable analytical manipulations to strongly improve numerical convergence. Planar array configurations based on microstrip leaky lines have been considered in detail for accurate evaluations of the relevant dispersion and radiation properties. The effects of phase‐shifted feeding of leaky lines have particularly been investigated as a function of the involved physical parameters, to achieve fundamental information on the beam scanning features both in elevation and azimuth. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 12: 272–287, 2002.     

Probe‐fed microstrip antennas loaded with very high‐permittivity ceramics

This article reports the feasibility study of miniaturizing probe‐fed microstrip patch antennas by dielectric loading. The loading materials are barium tetratitanate ceramics of very high dielectric constant (ε_r = 38, 80). It is shown that, simply through loading, the antenna sizes are greatly reduced; however, the antenna performances are deteriorated. For instance, the antenna gain becomes lower. Then enhancement of the antenna performances follows. A substrate–superstrate structure is used to recover the gain. Both the experiments and the finite‐difference time‐domain (FDTD) simulations demonstrate that the gain and impedance bandwidth can be retrieved such that they are comparable to those of conventional microstrip antennas loaded with low permittivity materials (ε_r < 3). © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.     

Performance of a circular crossed‐dipole array for SDMA configuration adopting directivity and polarization control using particle swarm optimization algorithm

In this article, the performance of a circular crossed‐dipole array (CCDA) for space division multiple access (SDMA) configurations adopting directivity and polarization control is presented. The array consists of 12 dual‐polarized elements uniformly distributed in a circular configuration; each dual‐polarized element (crossed‐dipole) consists of two half‐wave dipoles in a ±45° slant configuration. The modified particle swarm optimization and moment of method (MPSO‐MOM) algorithm is used to calculate the complex weightings of the array elements in a mutual coupling environment for beamforming synthesis. In addition, the performance of the adaptive array using discrete feedings (1‐bit amplitude and 4‐bit phase shifters or only 4‐bit phase shifters) is studied. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.     

MFOA‐integrated modified inverted F‐based adaptive array Antenna for 2.4 GHz band applications

This research has proposed a modified fruit fly optimization algorithm (MFOA)‐integrated adaptive array antenna (AAA) for the 2.4–2.5 GHz WLAN system. The principal components of the array antenna system encompass four array elements, four band pass filters (BPF), four digital phase shifters, a four‐way power combiner/splitter, a directional coupler, a radio frequency (RF) detector, and a microcontroller unit (MCU). In the realization of the adaptive antenna system, the modified inverted F antenna with a finite ground plane was first innovated and subsequently deployed as the element of the four‐element array antenna. In the study, simulations and experiments were carried out with the four‐element AAAs of two configurations, i.e. the linear and planar array configurations. The simulation and experimental results revealed that the MFOA algorithmic scheme could determine the direction of the maximum arrival signal in an efficient and accurate manner and also was capable of manipulating the radiation pattern in the desired direction. In addition, the MFOA‐integrated four‐element AAA is of compact size (20 mm × 35 mm × 1.8 mm) and operable in the 2.31–2.55 GHz frequency band with omnidirectional radiation pattern and a gain of 1.6 dBi. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2016.     

Millimeter‐wave planar high gain SIW antenna using half elliptic radiation slots

This article reports a high gain millimeter‐wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna using low cost printed circuit board technology. The half elliptic slots which can provide small shunt admittance, low cross polarization level and low mutual coupling are etched on the board surface of SIW as radiation slots for large array application. Design procedure for analyzing the characteristics of proposed radiation slot, the beam‐forming structure and the array antenna are presented. As examples, an 8 × 8 and a 32 × 32 SIW slot array antennas are designed and verified by experiments. Good agreements between simulation and measured results are achieved, which shows the 8 × 8 SIW slot array antenna has a gain of 20.8 dBi at 42.5 GHz, the maximum sidelobe level of 42.5 GHz E‐plane and H‐plane radiation patterns are 22.3 dB and 22.1 dB, respectively. The 32 × 32 SIW slot array antenna has a maximum measured gain of 30.05 dBi at 42.5 GHz. At 42.3 GHz, the measured antenna has a gain of 29.6 dBi and a maximum sidelobe level of 19.89 dB and 15.0 dB for the E‐plane and H‐plane radiation patterns. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:709–718, 2015.     

Design of miniaturized D‐band dual‐polarized dipole base station antenna based on coupling feeding

This article designs a coupling feeding miniaturized base station antenna. This base station antenna works in D‐band (2500‐2700 MHz). By introducing a bending structure to increase the current path of the dipole, the overall size of the dipole antenna can be reduced. The final design of antenna element size is only 36.8 × 36.8 mm² (0.32 × 0.32λ²). The simulation results show that the return loss of the two ports is greater than 23 dB, the isolation between the two ports is greater than 29 dB, the half‐power beamwidth of the antenna is 63° ± 1.5°, and the gain is greater than 9 dBi. The physical processing and simulation results are basically consistent, which prove the practicability of the dipole antenna. A broadband dipole antenna and this antenna are selected for array analysis. When it works in D‐band, the isolation of the antenna element designed in this article is better than that of the broadband dipole antenna.     

A double‐metallic‐layered Huygens’ surface for broadband and highly efficient beam refractions

In this article, a double‐metallic‐layered Huygens’ surface Huygens’ surface that efficiently refracts normally incident electromagnetic waves at the telecommunication frequency of 25 GHz is reported. The phase gradient along the interface is controlled by a series of isotropic, nonresonant, spatial phase shifters with dimensions of 0.5λ₀ × 0.5λ₀, where λ₀ is the free‐space wavelength at 25 GHz. The electric and magnetic responses of the unit cells are controlled by metallic patterns etched on both sides of an ultrathin dielectric substrate (with thickness of 0.07λ₀). These surface microstructures are shown to be able to fabricate high‐efficiency refract‐arrays, ultrathin, wideband focusing lenses. The full‐wave simulations demonstrate their excellent performances in manipulating electromagnetic wavefronts. The measured results for the fabricated refract‐array further show that it can refract normally incident waves to the predefined angle, and the peak value of the transmission efficiency approaches 76%. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:449–455, 2016.     

Integrated circular polarized microstrip antenna with dual‐mode‐polarization insensitive characteristics

A dual‐mode circularly polarized compact antenna with integrated left‐hand and right‐hand circular polarization (LHCP and RHCP) is presented in this work. A multilayer arrangement of a square patch and square ring structure with an irregular transmission line is analyzed for dual‐band, dual‐CP operation. To realize dual mode propagation the proposed structure is excited using electromagnetic coupling technique. Succeeding proximity feeding with T‐stub match is analyzed, which conveys impedance bandwidth of 180 and 300 MHz within |S₁₁| < ?10 dB at 3.5 and 5.5 GHz. The designed CP elements is suitably arranged with feed line for generating two orthogonal polarization of equal amplitude and a 90° phase difference at both the resonant modes (TM₁₀ and TM₀₁). Alterable LHCP and RHCP performance is realized by altering the compensated position and peculiar angle. Having both LHCP and RHCP polarization this design shows polarization insensitive characteristic. Each LHCP and RHCP antenna element accomplished a 3‐dB AR of 70 and 120 MHz with a gain up to 6 dBi. With a low profile of 0.27λ₀ × 0.27λ₀ × 0.04λ₀, the CP antenna is fabricated, and the performance is validated through experimental analysis. With all the viable characteristics, the antenna is proposed for Wi‐MAX/WLAN communication.