A Wide-Band Self-Complementary Tightly-Coupled Dipole Array With ±80° Scanning Range in the E Plane

Abstract

When a magnetic current antenna is parallel to a metal ground, it can produce a nearly 180° 3dB beamwidth in the E plane, which can achieve a wide-angle scanning range in the E plane. But the bandwidth of an equivalent magnetic current antenna is usually narrow. Therefore, we propose a self-complementary tightly-coupled dipole array (SC-TCDA) to achieve a wide-band magnetic current antenna, which has a wide-angle scanning range. A reflective cavity is added below the SC-TCDA. And a wide-angle impedance matching (WAIM) layer is added on the SC-TCDA. For an infinite array, the SC-TCDA can work over the band of 1.85-6.05 GHz (VSWRs<; 2.5) at the broadside, scan to ±80° in the E plane over the band of 2.2-5.95 GHz (VSWRs<; 2.5), ±40° in the H plane over the band of 1.9-6 GHz (VSWRs<; 2.5), and ±70° in the D plane over the band of 1.85-6.15 GHz (VSWRs<; 2.5). The efficiencies in different planes are greater than 80% for an infinite array. The profile of the proposed SC-TCDA is only 0.14 wavelengths at 2.2 GHz. An SC-TCDA with $16\times16$ elements is fabricated and measured. The measured and simulated results are in good agreement.

Keywords

• Wide-band magnetic current antenna
• tightly coupled dipole array
• self-complementary
• wide-angle impedance matching