Application of Novel Printed Dipole Antenna to Design Broadband Planar Phased Array

Abstract

A broadband planar phased array consisting of 22 linear printed dipole antennas (PDA) is presented in this paper. The element is designed by a coax probe feeding mechanism with a ground plate configuration. The PDA with two arms placed on both sides of a substrate is realized. The inner conductor of the coaxial cable is connected to the PDA’s upper arm, and the outer conductor is connected to the PDA’s lower arm, so it eliminates the balun. The impedance bandwidth of the PDA array can be improved by increasing mutual coupling effect between the adjacent array elements. A dielectric layer, which is integrated on the surface of the antenna, is designed and fabricated to improve the impedance bandwidth and to shield the array. The measured results indicate the active VSWR is less than 3 over the frequency range of 4–20 GHz.