Abstract
In this study, an X-band low-profile monopulse array antenna with high aperture efficiency is proposed for tracking applications. It is consists of a 112-element patch array antenna, a monopulse comparator, and a full corporate feed network which is composed of the waveguide and microstrip dividers. The monopulse comparator and waveguide part of the feed are produced out of a single-layer substrate as the back-end section. Also, the printed array antenna and microstrip part of the feed network are integrated as the front-end. Finally, the back-end and the front-end are integrated through 32 SMP connectors. The proposed design decreases the lateral size of the feed and results in achieving a high level of aperture efficiency. A prototype of the proposed design was manufactured and validated the design experimentally. The measurement results demonstrate that the impedance bandwidth ( ∣ S i i ∣ ⩽ − 12 dB ) is up to 12% with the isolations better than 20 dB. The maximum gain of the sum beam is 28.7 dBi, while the null depths of the difference patterns are better than 24 dB. The excellent characteristics of the proposed design make it a good candidate for two-dimensional monopulse tracking applications at X-band up to millimetre wavelengths.
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