Design and analysis of slotted sectoral waveguide array antennas embedded in cylindrically stratified media

Abstract

Slotted waveguide antennas are being widely used in military and commercial applications for many decades. Low cross-polarization, high power capacity, ease of fabrication in microwave bands, and the ability to form arrays make them excellent candidates for phased array antennas in radar applications. However, due to slots being highly resonant (narrow-band, high Q) radiators, their design parameters are very sensitive; hence, accurate design and analysis methods are required for a successful antenna design. Moreover, slotted waveguide array antennas are low-profile structures, which makes them suitable candidates for conformal and structure-integrated applications. Conformal and structure-integrated system solutions are especially required for air platforms, where aerodynamics, radar cross-section (RCS) and efficient use of real estate are of utmost importance. Although the accurate and efficient design and analysis of low-profile conformal slotted waveguide arrays are of great interest, available solution methods in the literature usually suffer in terms of efficiency and memory requirements. Among the available solution methods, one of the widely used solvers are integral equation (IE) based ones that utilize the method of moments (MoM). However, IE solvers suffer from long matrix fill times, especially for matrix entries related to the cylindrically stratified media.