Dual Band Antenna Array for Concurrent Shared Aperture Operation

Abstract

The paper presented herein introduces a novel method for the practical implementation of dual band antenna (DBA) arrays that are well-suited for simultaneous multifunction operation. The antenna elements operating at L-and C-band frequencies and sharing the same physical aperture allow for the antenna to serve multiple purposes. To achieve the desired radiation characteristics, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to determine the optimal inter-element spacings for L-band frequency elements and C-band frequency elements. Two non-uniformly spaced antenna (NUSA) arrays, one consisting of a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{1}\times \mathbf{8}$</tex> -element linear array operating at L-band and the other a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{2}\times \mathbf{32}$</tex> -element Planar array operating at C-band, have been interleaved into a common aperture, and their numerical, EM simulation, and experimental studies have been conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach for the development of a multi-functional antenna array.