Practical Implementation of Wideband and Wide-Scanning Cylindrically Conformal Phased Array

• Published in: IEEE transactions on antennas and propagation Vol. 67; no. 8; pp. 5729 - 5733
• Main Authors: Xiao, Shiwei, Yang, Shiwen, Zhang, Hangyu, Xiao, Qianshu, Chen, Yikai, Qu, Shi-Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bandwidths; Broadband; Conformal array; Couplings; Impedance; phased array; Phased arrays; planar array; Planar arrays; Product design; Scanning; Sonar; Tornadoes; wide-angle scanning; Wideband; wideband array
• ISSN: 0018-926X; 1558-2221
• DOI: 10.1109/TAP.2019.2922760

A practical implementation of wideband and wide-scanning cylindrically conformal phased array is presented in this communication. First, the design of a dual-polarized planar array is introduced in advance. Then, as a preliminary performance investigation of a conformal phased array, a single-polarized array element counterpart is developed from the dual-polarized planar array with simple modifications. Finally, a conformal array is implemented using the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">8 \times 8 </tex-math></inline-formula> single-polarized radiating elements that are axially mounted onto a cylindrical surface with a radius of 150 mm. A conformal array prototype is fabricated and measured. The experimental results demonstrate that the array achieves active VSWR less than 3.0 over a bandwidth of 6-18 GHz (3:1), within a wide-scanning range of ±60° in two principal planes. The measured results are in good accordance with the simulations, thus validating the performances of the proposed wideband and wide-scanning cylindrically conformal phased array.