Design and Simulation of Wideband, High Gain Matrix Antenna with Beam Steering and Low Side-Lobe Levels Features

Abstract

In this paper, a matrix antenna composed of radiating pixels elaborated in meta-materials is presented. The pixels are surmounted with a frequency selective structure and closed with four metallic walls. The cavity is excited by a radiating patch and filled with dielectric. This dielectric makes it possible to reduce the overall width of the pixel by increasing the dielectric length of the cavity while maintaining the performances of the pixel. The pixel is reduced to a width of 50.96 mm (0.34*λ) at 2 GHz. The -10 dB fractional bandwidth of the pixel is 22% (2-2.5 GHz). The pixel is then placed in a 17 elements matrix to achieve high steering angles. The optimization focuses on the steering capacity, the bandwidth and the side-lobes levels. On the whole band, the steering angle is more than 70° and the antenna achieves low side-lobes levels at less than -9.9 dB. A device to reduce the mutual coupling between the elements by using soft surfaces is also presented. These surfaces allow to widen the matching band while the steering is produced.