This invention relates to a wide bandwidth dual polarized array antenna using orthogonal feeding technique to have low profile and cosecant squared pattern. The array antenna with orthogonal feeding structures can be applied in base stations as well as in spectrum monitoring wideband receivers for both commerce and military purposes.
Most of civil and military communication systems require high gain and wide bandwidth antennas. In order to be applied in point to point or satellite communication systems, in base stations and in radar systems, wideband antennas are usually arranged in an array to easily shape the radiation beam and achieve a high gain. The array antennas demand a simple feeding technique to reduce losses, increase gain and realize a compact configuration.
One of solutions to satisfy the above requirements is to employ microstrip patch antennas in the array configuration. The advantages of microstrip antennas are compact profile, small sizes and low weight. This kind of antenna is convenient to realize a high gain array antenna with linear or circular polarization by serial or parallel coplanar feeding techniques. In this approach, the transmission line of feeding networks and the radiating element of array antennas are laid on the top plane of a large dielectric substrate. But the main disadvantage of microstrip antennas as applied in communication systems is small impedance bandwidth.
Dual polarized antenna with flower-shaped radiating elements and integrated high-performance balun is a promising solution in array configurations due to its wide bandwidth, high gain and small sizes. The radiation pattern of a dual polarized wide band array antenna can be controlled or shaped in a desired fashion if the phase differences between antenna elements are appropriately assigned. The dual polarized array antenna employs a metal ground placed under the flower-shaped radiators the height of a quarter wavelength at the center frequency of the operating bandwidth. If the elements in an array are fed from a power divider/combiner by a traditional method, many coaxial cable segments and connectors are consumed, causing a complicated structure in practice.
The main purpose of this invention is to introduce the orthogonal feeding technique for dual polarized wide bandwidth array antenna with compact profile and cosecant squared pattern. The orthogonal feeding structure connects the feeding networks implemented on stripline to the antenna element's balun implemented on microstrip line, in which the stripline and microstrip line are spatially orthogonal to each other. All array antenna parts are made of printed circuit boards, facilitating mass production with high speed and precision.
In order to clarify the above targets, this invention presents the array antenna structure in details including: feeding network, orthogonal feeding part and radiating element. The feeding network is comprised of two outputs corresponding to the dual polarizations of the array antenna and multiple inputs connected to antenna elements by orthogonal feeding structures. Based on the disparities between the branches of the feeding networks, the signals fed to antenna elements in the array has the same amplitude but different phases, generating a cosecant squared pattern for the array antenna.
In this invention, the orthogonal feeding technique is applied in an array antenna to reduce the number of connectors, i.e. reducing the losses at connectors and at coaxial cables. The array antenna with the proposed feeding technique is shown as in
The antenna element 1 for array configuration, presented in
Referred to
The orthogonal feeding structure 2 connecting each antenna element 1 to the stripline feeding network 3 is illustrated in
The feeding network 3 is designed by stripline technology with three layers: the top conducting layer (considered as ground plane) 8, the signal layer (16) sandwiched between two dielectric tablets and the bottom conducting layer 17. This feeding network has two identical power dividers/combiners with a center symmetry axis. Each power divider/combiner is realized by T-shaped configurations to combine signals from antenna elements to the output. In an attempt to achieve a cosecant squared beam, the lengths of the branches in the feeding network 3 are optimized and assigned different values for antenna elements.
In practice, the radiator 4 made of Rogers RT/Duroid 5580 with the thickness of 0.508 mm, the relative permittivity (εr) of 2.2 and the loss tangent (tan δ) of 0.0009. The high-performance baluns 7 are formed by four stem boards made of Rogers RO4350B (εr=3.48; tan δ=0.0037) with the thickness of 0.508 mm. The signal traces printed on the stem boards are copper having the thickness of 0.035 mm. The stripline feeding network 3 includes two Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 tablets (0.508 mm thickness) with the signal layer in the middle. The stripline lengths connecting to different element antennas are optimized to have phase values as listed in Table 1.
The dimensions of the array antenna are listed in the Table 2 below.
The array antenna peak gain for the frequency range from 8 to 18 GHz is presented in
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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1-2021-07685 | Nov 2021 | VN | national |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
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6300906 | Rawnick | Oct 2001 | B1 |
10840593 | Johnson | Nov 2020 | B1 |
Number | Date | Country |
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111883906 | Nov 2020 | CN |
Entry |
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English translation of CN111883906A (Year: 2020). |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20230170625 A1 | Jun 2023 | US |