3D printed lattice structure for lightweight Ka‐band phased array antenna

Abstract

Abstract Here a lightweight antenna array is designed and fabricated for a Ka‐band phased array antenna. From the perspective of advanced space‐borne engineering practice, a Kagome lattice structure is proposed for the lightweight antenna array applications and the representative configurations of the proposed lattice structure is fabricated via selective laser melting (SLM). Experiment is performed to estimate the electrical performance with the featured structure. Compared with the conventional antenna array, the proposed one has 69% less weight, identical measured radiation patterns, and good electrical performance. The results demonstrate the great potentials for other readily customized lightweight phased array antenna applications.

Keywords

• Antenna arrays