Design of a Dual-Polarized Low Sidelobe Slotted Waveguide Antenna for C-Band Phased Array Weather Radar

Abstract

This paper presents a dual-polarized low sidelobe slotted waveguide array antenna manufactured by resin injection molding for a C-band phased array weather radar. A slotted waveguide array has high efficiency and low cross-polarization, but it is generally manufactured by metal machining process, which increases its weight and cost. To solve the problems, the developed antenna is made by manufacturing approach that combines resin injection molding and plating. The vertically-polarized (V-pol.) and horizontally-polarized (H-pol.) antennas are a single-ridged slotted waveguide array and an edge-slotted waveguide array, respectively. In this paper, we focus on the V-pol. antenna, and simulation shows that −32.5 dB sidelobe level is obtained for the array, and the bandwidth with the active reflection coefficient less than −10 dB is 3.6%.