Experiments on injection locking of active antenna elements foractive phased arrays and spatial power combiners |
| |
Authors: | Chang K Hummer KA Klein JL |
| |
Affiliation: | Dept. of Electr. Eng., Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX; |
| |
Abstract: | Two types of active antenna elements have been studied experimentally. One type uses a microstrip antenna with an active device mounted directly on the antenna. The other uses an active device coupled to a microstrip patch antenna through an aperture. Microstrip active antenna elements and two-element arrays have been demonstrated for both types of circuits. Injection locking of the antenna elements has been achieved through space and mutual coupling. The circuit Q factor was calculated based on the locking gain and the locking bandwidth. The power output from two elements has been successfully combined in free space with a combining efficiency of over 90%. For a single active antenna with a Gunn diode mounted directly on the patch, an electronic tuning range exceeding 9% has been achieved by varying the DC bias. The results should have many applications in low-cost active arrays, active transmitters, and spatial power combiners |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|