Design of a Spherical Conformal Phased Array Antenna Based on the Truncated Icosahedron

Abstract

Spherical phased array antenna is widely used in satellite communication, weather surveillance and aircraft detection thanks to its hemispherical scanning potentials. In this paper, we designed a spherical conformal phased array antenna through pentagon and hexagon sub-arrays that following the truncated icosahedron configuration. The radiator inside each sub-array was an array of dual-polarized microstrip antennas. Full polarization is thereby formed due to the superimposition of these sub-arrays with various orientations. For a targeted direction, the active sub-arrays and antennas were defined first. Then pattern synthesis simulations were conducted by convex optimization methods to obtain the excitations for desired patterns. It is demonstrated that this antenna array could achieve hemispherical coverage while reducing the fabrication cost and facilitating the pattern synthesis process.