A Wideband Phased Array With Broad Scanning Range and Wide-Angle Impedance Matching

Abstract

For wide-angle scanning phased arrays, the efficiency of active elements is deteriorated with the increase of mutual impedance. This article demonstrates an effective strategy to control the mutual impedance among array elements by canceling the major coupling effect. The implemented wideangle impedance matching (WAIM) of a wideband phased array verifies the validity of the proposed strategy. For the array element, to obtain wide-angle radiation and wideband characteristic, parallel slots with unequal lengths are deliberately etched on a low-profile substrate integrated cavity (SIC). The mutual impedance between two arbitrary elements is remarkably controlled and compensated by canceling the major coupling effect, which is realized by etching symmetrical slots and loading periodical loops within each element. With the controlled mutual impedance, the proposed array possesses excellent wide-angle scanning performance. Both the simulated and measured results indicate that the designed array steers its main beam from -70° to +70° in the xoz azimuth plane in a broad frequency range from 8.0 to 9.5 GHz. The active S-parameter of each element remains lower than -10 dB in the operating band while the array scans. Due to the implemented WAIM, the total efficiency of the array exceeds 90% during the scan and the fluctuation of realized gain is less than 3 dB.