Wideband Tightly Coupled Dipole Arrays With Balanced Scattering and Radiation Based on a Black-Box Method

Zhechen Zhang,Shiwei Qu,Shiwei Xiao,Yikai Chen,Jianhui Huang,Shiwen Yang

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2934112

Abstract

A key challenge in the new generation of advanced phased arrays is to realize wideband and wide-scanning performances while maintaining lower scattering characteristics. In this paper, a black box method (BBM) is proposed for accelerating balanced optimization of radiation and monostatic scattering characteristics of an antenna element in an infinite periodic environment. To validate the method, a common tightly coupled dipole array (TCDA) with unbalanced feed scheme is considered. Besides, the indium tin oxide (ITO) film is introduced to further improve the wide-angle scanning and monostatic scattering reduction abilities. Finally, a $10\times 10$ single-polarized TCDA prototype with ITO film is fabricated and measured. Measured results are in good agreement with simulation results and demonstrate that the TCDA has a balanced radiation and scattering characteristics, such as an active VSWR < 3.0 over 7– 18 GHz while scanning up to 60° in E-/H-plane and a broadband monostatic scattering reduction.

Highlights

Wideband phased arrays are developing rapidly in order to support generation communication and electronics applications
The tightly coupled dipole arrays (TCDAs) utilize their capacitive coupling between the adjacent elements to cancel the inductive load resulting from the short-circuited ground plane effects
Inspired from [33], the indium tin oxide (ITO) film is innovatively implemented as a wide-angle impedance matching (WAIM) layer placed upon TCDA to help realize the balanced optimization of scanning radiation performances and the reduction of monostatic scattering, simultaneously

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Wideband phased arrays are developing rapidly in order to support generation communication and electronics applications. The tightly coupled dipole arrays (TCDAs) utilize their capacitive coupling between the adjacent elements to cancel the inductive load resulting from the short-circuited ground plane effects. Owing to their obvious advantages such as low profile, ultra-wide bandwidth, and wide-angle beam scanning, many innovative studies on such kind of array have been proposed in the past decades [5]–[8]. The arrays consist of tightly coupled dipoles printed on grounded dielectric substrates, and each of the dipoles is fed directly from a 50 unbalanced interface, using a pair of shorting posts placed on the opposite sides of arms to shift off the common-mode resonance In this circumstance, the entire array is able to be optimized altogether instead of designing arrays and baluns separately.

THE PROCESS OF ANTENNA ELEMENT DESIGN BASED ON BBM

CONCLUSION