Wideband Phased Array Antenna Technology

With the development of modern radar and communication technology, various wireless electronic systems are putting forward more and more strict requirements on their antennas performance. For example, phased array antennas are often required to pass on as many information as possible due to their high price tag. As a result, phased array antennas are usually required to be broadband, wideband or even ultra-wideband. Recently, broadband antenna arrays have found widespread applications in many areas, such as multifunction radar, broadband radar or even ultra-wideband radar, electronic counter measures (ECM), electronic counter-counter measures (ECCM), and communication, etc. However, broadband array designs are often of challenges to antenna designers, due to the inherent mutual coupling effect, excitation errors and fabrication errors, etc. This thesis is to study a novel type of broadband array based on intentional mutual effect both theoretically and experimentally. The thesis mainly contains the following three parts:Firstly, a survey on broadband array and their state-of-the-art research status will be presented in the first Chapter of this thesis.Secondly, the theory of the ultra-wideband antenna and several relevant design methods of wideband antenna array will be given in the first part of Chapter 2. In addition, a detailed theory of the broadband arrays with intentionally introduced mutual coupling effect will be given in the later part of Chapter 2.Thirdly, Based on the theory of the broadband arrays with intentionally introduced mutual coupling, several types of antenna arrays are designed and simulated using the electromagnetic simulator HFSS in Chapter 3. Simulated results show that the studied antenna elements indeed have very broad bandwidths in infinite array environment.Finally, the simulation and design of a 24-element linear array of printed dipoles with broadened arms are presented in Chapter 4. Preliminary measurement results in Chapter 5 verified the broadband characteristics of the linear array without beam scanning.