AN X/Ku DUAL-BAND SHARED APERTURE UNIFORM LINEAR ANTENNA ARRAY FOR AIRBORNE SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR APPLICATIONS

Abstract

An amplitude distribution of shared aperture antenna array for airborne SAR applications using a dual-band (X/Ku-band) synthesis is presented in this research. It is utilizing a linear arrangement with 1 × 8 antenna elements and a series feeding mechanism to operate in the X/Ku bands. The proposed shared aperture antenna array has eight elements providing a uniform array in the X and Ku bands. To realize the proposed scanning array, the X/Ku-band antenna array takes an inter-element spacing of 0.7 λ, which provides a scanning angle of ± 25°. When the space between adjacent antenna arrays is effectively used to reduce the influence of mutual coupling, the synthesis array's X-band and Ku-band antenna arrays can perform well in isolation. The uniform linear array exhibits Side Lobe Level (SLL) of -23.9 dB in X-Band and -24.7 dB in Ku-Band, with maximum realized gains of 14.2 dBi in X-Band and 15.7 dBi in Ku-Band. The isolation between bands and ports exceeds 25 dB. The uniform amplitude distribution shared aperture antenna (UAD SAA) has accepted an SLL performance of -13.5 dB. Additionally, it displays a uniform (X/Ku-band 200/144 MHz) impendence bandwidth that is relatively wide.