Design of a wide beamwidth spherical conformal antenna array for ship‐borne applications

Abstract

AbstractThis study presents the phase setting method for a spherical conformal antenna array to achieve a wide beamwidth circularly polarized radiation pattern. A dodecahedral spherical array was fabricated and measured to validate the phase setting method. The array adopts a regular dodecahedron spatial distribution structure composed of 11 dual‐polarization elements. By exciting 11 elements simultaneously with designed phase distributions, the proposed spherical array can achieve a wide beamwidth of more than 210° with circular polarization by selecting the radius of the dodecahedron. In addition, the power division network of the array is designed and processed, and the feed network is simplified by rotating the antenna element port to control the phase. Measurements agree well with the simulations. The measured results show that the proposed spherical antenna array achieves a half‐power beamwidth of more than 210° and an axial‐ratio beamwidth of larger than 240°.