Design of a Low-Profile and Low Scattering Wideband Planar Phased Antenna Array

This communication presents a low-profile and low scattering wideband planar phased antenna array with enhanced coupling (PAA-EC). The proposed chessboard-like PAA-EC consists of two different types of low-profile planar antenna elements that have similar radiation performance in the X-band. In addition, the two types of antenna elements have a 180 degrees +/- 37 degrees reflection phase difference over the X-band, which guarantees the cancellation of scattering fields for low scattering purpose. On the other hand, an 8 x 8 reference PAA-EC and a low scattering PAA-EC are developed and fabricated to validate the radiation performance and scattering characteristics. The simulated and measured results show that the proposed low-profile planar PAA-EC operates in the 8-12 GHz band with +/- 45 degrees scanning range. It also achieves at least 9 dB scattering cross section (SCS) reduction in the 8-15.2 GHz-band as compared with the reference PAA-EC.