The Design of a K-Band 256-Element Reconfigurable Multi-Beam Phased-Array for SATCOM Application

In this paper, we present a 256-element K-band (17.7-21.2GHz) phased array with 4 concurrent multi-beam, of which the polarization can be reconfigured as linear polarized, dual-polarized or circular polarized. With a stacked patch antenna unit designed of Rogers 4350B, the bandwidth of the phased array can reach 18% with VSWR < 2. Simulation results indicate that the phased array can be steered up to ±60° in 2-dimension space with axial ratio below 4dB within the whole bandwidth, when circular polarization is configured. Besides, with maximum gain of 28.2 dBi in the normal direction, the 3dB beam-width is about 6.9° with the side lobe levels (SLLs) all below -13.3 dB. With the wide spatial coverage and reconfigurable concurrent multi-beam, this design will be promising in applications like SATCOM and wireless communication systems.