Properties of a 2-6 GHz tapered slot antenna array

Authors:

  • Carlegrim Börje
  • Gunnarsson Ronny
  • Pettersson Leif
  • Erickson Roland

Publish date: 2001-01-29

Report number: FOA-R--00-01742-616

Pages: 41

Written in: English

Abstract

The design and evaluation of properties of a 2-6 GHz dual polarised array consisting of two displaced co-located linear polarised arrays, each consisting of 7x8 tapered slot elements, are reported. The main focus is on experimental evaluation of the S-matrix of this array. The active reflection coefficients of the elements in this array are typically below -10dB for scanangles up to at least 50 degrees in three evaluated measurement planes. Efficiency computations revealed that more than 80 percent of the power is radiated for scan angles up to at least 60 degrees in the E-plane, H-plane, and one of the diagonal planes for frequencies above 2.5 GHz. The efficiency has also been calculated for subsets of the array. Our evaluation of the active reflection coefficient, as calculated from measured couplings, in the dual-polarised array consisting of two displaced, co-located, linear-polarised array didn´t show blind spots. Nor have we experimentally detected blind dips in the element gain. Our view is that the blind spots only seem to appear if the antenna array is large enough, in terms of wavelengths. Further investigations of active element patterns (i.e. complex valued radiation properties) are essential, especially if circular polarisation is of interest.