An Integrated Radiation and Scattering Performance Design Method of Low-RCS Patch Antenna Array With Different Antenna Elements

Abstract

In this communication, a novel integrated radiation and scattering performance design method of patch antenna array is proposed that can realize good radiation and low radar cross section (RCS) characteristics simultaneously without any additional RCS reduction structures except for the antenna elements. Two different antenna elements, which have similar radiation performances and different reflection phases, are used to form the array. By using different feed and patch structures, both the desired radiation and scattering characteristics of the two antenna elements can be controlled separately. Thus, a similar radiation performance and a 180° reflection phase difference can be obtained simultaneously by adjusting the size of the patches and the length of the slots on the ground plane. The simulation results show that the proposed integrated design array has approximately the same radiation performances as the arrays with uniform elements. In addition, the monostatic RCS of the proposed array is significantly reduced from 4 to 8 GHz, with a maximum reduction value of 23 dB. To validate the simulation results, prototypes of the integrated design antenna array with $4\times 4$ elements are fabricated and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated results.