Conical Conformal Antenna Research Articles

A Dual-Polarized 2-D Monopulse Antenna Array for Conical Conformal Applications

A dual-polarized 2-D monopulse conical conformal antenna is proposed in this article. First, a method for implementing dual-polarized monopulse beams is presented. A novel array arrangement and a dual-polarized monopulse comparator suitable for conformal arrays are developed. Then, a wideband endfire element based on the double rhombic dipole is designed with directors and a reflector to obtain a stable high-gain endfire radiation. A conformal feeding network consisting of four rat-race couplers is employed to excite four conformal elements. The sum and difference beams of horizontal and vertical polarizations are realized on the azimuth and elevation planes. To verify the design concept, a prototype of the antenna array was designed, fabricated, and measured. The experimental results show that the proposed monopulse array achieves a shared bandwidth of 22.2% from 8.96 to 11.2 GHz on four ports, with the sum-beam gain of 9-11 dBi, the difference-beam gain of 5.8-7.7 dBi, and the null-depth of around -25 dB. To the best knowledge of the authors, the design concept of combining dual-polarized 2-D monopulse array with conical conformal antenna is proposed for the first time, which is a promising candidate as target detection and tracking antennas for various aircraft applications.

Conical Conformal Shaped-Beam Substrate-Integrated Waveguide Slot Array Antenna With Conical-to-Cylindrical Transition

The analysis and design of a millimeter-wave conical conformal shaped-beam substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) array antenna is demonstrated in this paper. After investigating the influence of the conical surface on the propagation characteristics of a conformal SIW, a modification for the width of a conical conformal SIW is proposed to obtain the same propagation characteristic along the longitudinal direction. This feature is indispensable to employ the classic equivalent circuit of a planar slot array antenna in the design of a conical conformal antenna. In this case, the design process of the conformal antenna can be simplified. An efficient and accurate model method of the conical conformal SIW antenna is presented as well. Then, a design process of the conical conformal SIW slot array antenna is introduced. Furthermore, to implement the transition between a conical surface and a cylindrical surface, a flexible SIWtransition is designed with a good impedance matching. Finally, two low sidelobe level (SLL) SIW conical conformal antennas with and without the flexible transitions are designed. Both of them have −28 dB SLLs in H-plane at the center frequency of 35 GHz.

Design of Ka-Band Inset-Fed Conical Conformal Patch Antenna

Conical conformal microstrip patch antenna is very important in wireless communication and microwave instrument. In this paper, a Ka-band rectangular inset-fed microstrip patch antenna which conforms to a conical surface has been designed, the specific designed method and parameters were given. Then a conical conformal microstrip antenna is simulated by CST, the difference between planar antenna and conical conformal antenna has been discussed, and the effect of surface curvature on conical conformal antenna resonant frequency of has been analyzed.

Design and Analysis of a CPW-Fed Broadband Conical Conformal Antenna

A CPW-fed microstrip monopole antenna which is conformal to a conical surface is presented in this paper. It has a simple structure printed on a substrate with dielectric constant of 2.55 and thickness of 0.2mm. By the aid of electromagnetic simulation software of CST Microwave Studio, the main influencing parameters of the antenna are simulated and analyzed, the difference between planar antenna and conical conformal antenna has been discussed, and the optimized physical model has been achieved. The simulated result shows the proposed CPW-fed conical conformal antenna has a broad bandwidth property that covers from 6.2 to 20GHz(VSWR 2), and it is suitable for wideband radar applications.