Sheng Ye

High-Gain Planar Antenna Arrays for Mobile Satellite Communications [Antenna Applications Corner]

Two large and low-profile panel antenna arrays, used as receiving and transmitting antennas for mobile satellite communications, are described. The receiving and transmitting arrays have overall dimensions of 120 cm × 20.7 cm × 1.3cm and 107.5 cm × 20.4 cm × 1.7 cm, respectively. They exhibit high gains and adequate efficiencies, due to integrated array designs. For the receiving panel array, a method using a number of high-efficiency subarrays, combined with a novel active integrated global feed network, is proposed. For the transmitting panel array, a number of high-efficiency subarrays, together with a novel compact waveguide feed network, is employed. Based on the above techniques, two large panel antenna arrays were successfully developed. We present the detailed designs of the subarrays, the passive and active feed networks, and the vertical transitions. Simulated and experimental results showed that the designed receiving and transmitting panel arrays achieved measured gains and efficiencies of 34.1 dBi and 48.2%, and 33.5 dBi and 36.3%, respectively, in each band. This indicated that the proposed antenna panels are good candidates for future satellite communications applications.

A Compact Dual-Band Orthogonal Circularly Polarized Antenna Array With Disparate Elements

A dual-band orthogonally and circularly polarized antenna array with disparate elements is presented. By using corner-truncated stacked patches as elements, both left hand circular polarization (LHCP) in 12 GHz band and right hand circular polarization (RHCP) in 14 GHz band are realized in a shared antenna aperture. Furthermore, by employing disparate elements, the coupling between the two bands is suppressed effectively inside the feed network, hence improving isolation. The measured results of a four-element array agreed well with the simulated ones, achieving isolation better than 20 dB in the dual bands, and a maximum gain of 13.2 dBic for the LHCP and 13.9 dBic for the RHCP. The proposed array can find applications in satellite communications.

A Cylindrically Conformal Array With Enhanced Axial Radiation

A cylindrically conformal four-element slot array with enhanced axial radiation is proposed in this letter. To realize the axial radiation, first the element adopts conformal dual U-shaped slots with two low-profile cavities to obtain the tilted radiation. Second, four conformal elements integrated uniformly at the circumference of the metallic cylindrical shell are fed by a 1-to-4 microstrip feed network with a 90° sequential phase difference to obtain the axial radiation. Both simulated and measured results are presented and confirm that the 10-dB impedance bandwidth is larger than 400 MHz, covering the frequency range from 3 to 3.4 GHz, and the maximum axial radiation gain is 5.12 dBic. The proposed conformal array has a low profile with only about 0.03λ0, which can be mounted on the surface of any carrier conveniently.

DESIGN AND TESTING OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE ANTENNA ARRAY WITH A NOVEL FEED NETWORK

A novel feed network for microstrip antenna array is presented. By using the novel feeding structure, a high-performance Ku-band antenna is designed and fabricated. The 32 elements of the array are arranged in a 2-by-16 configuration. The measured peak gain at centre frequency is 22.93 dBi with an aperture efficiency of 70.5% and SLL of −12.3 dB from 11.75 GHz-12.75 GHz.

Improved Mid-Field calibration technology for linear array

Mid-Field Calibration Technology (MFCT) has the advantages of low cost and easy implementation, while may not work correctly when modules are relatively large, due to its susceptibility to parallelism tolerance on phase calibration. This paper presents an improved method for MFCT which will effectively solve the problem without increasing the complexity of the system. Experimental results show that the improved MFCT is capable and accurate for linear array consisting of large subarrays as modules.

Design of a passive multifaceted phased array for hemispherical coverage

Design of a passive multifaceted phased array for hemispherical coverage is proposed in this paper, which has the advantages of low cost and easy fabrication. The multifaceted array consists of seven passive planar phased sub-arrays accommodated on the sides of a pyramidal frustum. Simulated results indicate that the multifaceted phased array achieves realized gains of over 10dBi within 86.6% and 91.2% of the full hemispherical and quasi-hemispherical coverage region, respectively, where the estimated insertion loss introduced by the networks have been taken into account.

Wide bandwidth dual-frequency dual-polarized microstrip array antenna for Ku-band applications

In this paper, a wideband dual-frequency dual-polarized microstrip array antenna with a high gain is proposed for the ku-band satellite communication application. The antenna has a vertical polarization for transmitting band and a horizontal polarization for receiving band. Symmetry feed, series feed and parallel feed techniques are together used to design array antenna. The experimental results show that the proposed array antenna obtains the impedance bandwidth of 27.86% in receiving band, 21.04% in transmitting band, and the gain of 28-30.2dBi in both bands.

A compact wide beam circularly polarized antenna

A novel circularly-polarized antenna with wide bandwidth and beamwidth is presented. The antenna is composed of four compact linearly-polarized elements, which are sequentially rotated with a phase difference of 90° and fed by a four-way microstrip feed network. The antenna achieves an impedance bandwidth (S11<;-10dB) of 18%, with the HP (Half-Power) and 3dB-AR (Axial Ratio)-beamwidth of about 120° and stable gains of about 4dBi.

An ultra-wideband dielectric resonator antenna with pattern reconfiguration

In this paper, an ultra-wideband dielectric resonator antenna is proposed for wireless communication device applications. The antenna can provide the monopole-like radiation pattern and the mushroom-like radiation pattern in the operation band from 3.9 to 12.2 GHz (VSWR≤2) through the in-phase feed and the out-phase feed of two input ports, respectively.

The optimal design of patch antennas with smooth border

A novel method to design patch antenna with computer-aid is presented in this paper. Smooth curve is used to generate the border of the patch antenna; and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is implemented to control the shape of the patch, which leads the result less dependent on designers experience and more reasonable. Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) algorithm is used for electromagnetic simulation. The optimization of process is conducted on the parallel cluster to reduce computational time. To verify the correctness of this method, an antenna working on WLAN band has been optimized and fabricated. The experiment result is showed in the end.