Benchmarking Ultrawideband Phased Antenna Arrays: Striving for Clearer and More Informative Reporting Practices

Abstract

This article presents embedded element design and measurement data for an ultrawideband (UWB) flared-notch (Vivaldi) array. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) built this all-metal dual-polarized phased array specifically as a benchmarking reference for other planar phased-array apertures in the 2-21.2-GHz frequency range. It is suitable for comparative reporting of new array radiator performance, a practice favored by the Navy for effective technology readiness level (TRL) assessment. The 256-port (16 t 16, 7-mm array lattice spacing) slant-linear array is precision machined to ensure consistent agreement between measured performance results and predictions from simulated full-wave models, making the array desirable for benchmarking new array hardware as well as validating computational modeling tools. The optimally sampled aperture has excellent matching and zero scan blindness out to 80d in all scan planes, for grating-lobe-free scans over roughly 2-21.2 GHz. Benchmarking is tailored to highlight cross-polarization (cross-pol) performance in all scan planes, an important metric that should be tested during array radiator design. This data can be made available to design engineers for comparative evaluation of new UWB radiator performance under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA). NRL provides this and similar benchmarking data sets (and related measurement services) in the 0.8-75-GHz range.