Investigation on SIW Slot Antenna Array with Beam Scanning Ability

A sparse substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) slot antenna array and its application on phase scanning are studied in this paper. The genetic algorithm is used to optimize the best arrangement for 8-element and 7-element sparse arrays over an aperture of 4.50. Antenna arrays with feeding networks, for steering the main beam pointing to 0 degrees and -15 degrees, are demonstrated with the SIW technology. The comparison between the sparse array and the conventional uniformly spaced array with the same aperture are presented, which suggest that the same beam width can be obtained with the gain decreased by 0.5 or 1dBi and the number of element reduced by 2 or 3, respectively. The sparse antenna array with beam scanning ability presented in this paper shows that, while the beam scanning in the range of +/- 15 degrees, the gain fluctuation is less than 0.3dBi and the side lobe level is lower than -10dB.