| Today's data oriented personal communications satellite systems have a requirement for a small, lightweight, high frequency antenna for their mobile ground stations. This thesis presents an investigation of a 30 GHz passive phased array antenna amenable to future integration of active elements, and use as a portable satellite communications terminal.;The array antenna consisted of 64 cavity antenna elements arranged in an isosceles triangular lattice, forming a rectangular aperture, fed via a corporate microstrip line feed network. An isosceles triangular lattice was used to minimize the array's inter-element spacing and a distributed corporate feed network was used to maximize the array's bandwidth. The corporate structure was based on a horizontal quarter-wave transformer configured T-Junction power divider and rounded ninety degree bends. The array antenna was sub-divided into 16, four-element sub-arrays to allow for modularity in both the feed network, and for future active element integration.;A cavity antenna was chosen for its gain, low profile, and ability to suppress surface waves, dissipate heat, and to provide a rigid structure on which to base the entire array antenna. A new modular design provided a high gain and improved on the existing fabrication techniques.;The results obtained established that an array antenna based on a cavity antenna element and a distributed corporate feed network is viable for use as a portable satellite communications array. As well, the high correlation between the experimental and simulated results validates the design procedure and experimental methods employed throughout this thesis. |
