1-D Wide-Angle Beam-Scanning Linear Phased Array With Enhanced Gain by Using 3-D Printed Dielectric Slab Superstrate

Abstract

A 1-D wide-angle beam-scanning linear phased array with enhanced gain by using dielectric slab superstrate (DSS) is presented. In this scenario, the beams of array elements in the scanning plane should be wide enough and that in the orthogonal plane should be as narrow as possible. Different from the existing DSS technology, the DSS in this letter is used to satisfy the requirements of the beams in both planes. The parameters of the DSS and its position are optimized by setting the narrowest beam in the orthogonal plane as the objective function under the constraint of the specified wide beam in the scanning plane. To validate the proposed scheme, an eight-element DSS linear phased array operating at 10 GHz was designed, fabricated, and measured. Using the simple measure, the measured 3.5 dB gain enhancement in the scanning range of ±43° has been achieved with the aperture efficiency of 98%, the low profile of 1.39 wavelength, and the acceptable side-lobe levels (SLL) of better than −8.7 dB.