Low sidelobe light weight microstrip antenna array for battlefield surveillance radars

The paper describes the Design Realisation of a 512 (32 x 16) element Microstrip Antenna Array in X-Band, offering high performance features applicable to battlefield surveillance radars. The new Planar Array Configuration realised, utilises optimised inset fed Square Patch Elements distributed on a small size aperture, with a low loss multilayer Hybrid Corporate Feed Network designed for a Low Sidelobe Taylor's Amplitude Distribution. The novel Microstrip Antenna Array, designed, fabricated in numbers and tested,has offered a fairly Wide Bandwidth (4%) in X-Band, a High Gain(> 30 dB) with a good Return loss (< -15 dB) and Low Sidelobe (< -25 dB) pattern performance through the bandwidth, and weighs only 1.2 kg with its Back-up Structure.