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

© 2013 IEEE. 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 $2 \times 2$ corner-removed patch subarray. This $2 \times 2$ 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 $2 \times 2$ 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 ( $16 \times 6$ ) 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

A Ultra-Light High Gain Circularly-Polarized Antenna Array for Mobile Satellite Terminals

© 2018 IEEE. A ultra-light, compact, high gain 16 × 6 CP antenna array is presented in this paper for Ku band mobile satellite applications. The 96-element array consists of 24 2 × 2 CP sub arrays fed by a substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) network. Two essential and innovative techniques were adopted in this design. First, in order to achieve the ultra-light weight, the radiation patches were etched on the Polyimide film supported by a patterned foam. A piece of thin SIW network was designed to feed the radiators. The total weight of the fabricated array prototype is only 66.5 gram and profile is low as 0.05 λ0. Second, a sequential rotation (SQR) feeding technique was applied to the aperture fed 2 × 2 CP sub array, which realized more than three times bandwidth enhancement than the direct (non-SQR) feeding approach. In addition, the measured results show the CP-operational bandwidth is 700 MHz from 11.55 to 12.25 GHz. The peak realized gain is 26.4 dBic and gain variation is stable (less than 3 dB) cross the entire operating bandwidth. Be ultra-light and high gain, it is an excellent candidate for Ku band satellite applications

6×6 Array of Four-arm Spiral Antennas for High-gain Satellite Receiver Applications at Low Elevation

A 6×6 array of four-arm spiral antennas is presented for satellite receiver applications at 18 GHz. The array provides a wide-angle elevation scanning with a high gain right handed circularly polarized (RHCP) radiation beam. Each spiral element has four spiral arms with four feeding ports. The four arms are arranged symmetrically with respect to the center of the antenna. When one of the four ports are excited and other ports are open-circuited, the spiral element provides an RHCP tilted beam (θ max = 51°) with a gain of 8.4 dBi. By switching the excitation among the four feeding ports, the spiral element can switch the beam in four different quadrants in space. It is demonstrated that by combining these four unit-patterns, the 6×6 array of four-arm spirals provides an elevation scanning range of -70°≤ θ ≤ 70° with a maximum gain up to 20.6 dBi

Performance of a New Design Based on Substrate-Integrated Waveguide Slotted Antenna Arrays for Dual-Band Applications (Ku / K)

This paper introduces and discusses the study of a new concept for SIW array antenna development. This conducted development is based on three designs, two of them related to 1x2 arrays fed by SIW line, combined with SIW inset line, and the last designed for 2X2 array antenna feed by SIW inset line. All these structures are designed to give dual-band at (Ku - K) bands with enhanced gain and bandwidth. The new 2x2 array antenna has a high gain, and it consists of four SIW cavities staggered patches with a 90° phase shift, which are fed using microstrip line shielded by SIW vias. The designs were conducted using full-wave simulator ANSYS HFSS - the frequency domain solver. The 2x2 array antenna gives a return loss about (-20 dB), a high gain of 9.05 dB, and two bandwidth equals 210 MHz and 1310 MHz respectively at both of the operating bands. To validate the simulated results the simulation was conducted again using the time-domain solver of the CST Microwave Studio (MWS) full-wave simulator. Simulation results obtained from the two software having different solvers were in good agreement in the results