Dipole antenna

Balun

Electrical engineering

Optics

Physics

Engineering

Array gain

Radiation pattern

Standing wave ratio

Microstrip antenna

Electrical impedance

Materials science

Antenna (radio)

Acoustics

Bandwidth (computing)

Wideband

Computer science

Phased array

Impedance matching

Antenna array

Telecommunications

Ground plane

IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation

An extremely wideband (EWB) antenna array is presented that covers the UHF to C-bands (0.13-6 GHz). The array has dual-linear polarization and is capable of wide-angle scanning. Notably, this array achieves a 46:1 contiguous impedance bandwidth at broadside with VSWR <; 3.1 across most of the band and VSWR <; 4 when scanning down to 60° in the E-plane across the band. In the H-plane, the VSWR worsens when scanning down to 60°. In addition to building on the tightly coupled dipole array concept, the enabling novelty of this EWB array is the use of a frequency-selective surface (FSS) resistive card (R-card) within the substrate that suppresses periodic ground plane interference. Also, a highly improved impedance matching network with tapered stripline balun is employed. A 12 × 12 array prototype was fabricated and tested to verify the bandwidth and gain performance of a finite array. The simulated radiation efficiency was demonstrated to be 72% on average across the band.

Phased Array With Low-Angle Scanning and 46:1 Bandwidth