A Low Profile, Ultra-Lightweight, High Efficient Circularly-Polarized Antenna Array for Ku Band Satellite Applications

作者：Huang, Jianquan; Lin, Wei^*; Qiu, Feng; Jiang, Chunzhi; Lei, Dajun; Guo, Y. Jay

来源：IEEE Access, 2017, 5: 18356-18365.

DOI：10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2750318

• CP antenna array
• low profile
• lightweight
• Ku band satellite applications
• SIW feeding network
• sequentially rotating excitation method
• patch antennas

A novel low-profile, ultra-lightweight, high-efficient circularly polarized (CP) planar patch antenna array is reported for Ku-band satellite TV reception applications. The basic radiating element of the antenna array is realized by a 2 x 2 corner-removed patch subarray. This 2 x 2 patch subarray is center fed by a rectangular coupling aperture etched on the top surface of a substrate-integrated-waveguide cavity. A novel compact sequential rotation feeding technique is adopted to broaden the operating bandwidth without occupying additional area. The 2 x 2 CP subarray can be easily scaled up for large size antenna arrays due to its single layer feeding network and compact radiating elements. In addition, the patch radiators are printed on a thin layer of Polyimide film backed by a piece of supporting foam to minimize the entire weight. To verify the design concept, a 96-element (16 x 6) CP patch array was fabricated and tested. Measured results show that the operating bandwidth is 700 MHz from 11.55 to 12.25 GHz. The gain is stable across the operating bandwidth with a realized peak gain of 26.4 dBic. The height of the antenna is 0.05 lambda(0) and the total weight is only 66.5 g. It serves as an excellent candidate for Ku-band satellite applications.

• 出版日期2017
• 单位湘南学院