Wideband Circularly Polarized Dielectric Resonator 2-D Beam Scanning Phased Array Antenna Based on Liquid Crystals

A wideband circularly polarized dielectric resonator two-dimensional (2-D) beam scanning phased-array antenna with liquid crystal (LC) -based spiral delay line is proposed in this paper. The structure, which is designed at 20 GHz, consists of a 4 × 4 elliptically shaped dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) array, continuously spiral delay lines and radio frequency (RF) feeding line. Elliptically shaped DRA and sequential rotation (SR) are used to achieve both wide impedance and axial ratio (AR) bandwidths. The proposed phased array exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 38% (16.75– 24.62 GHz) and 3-dB AR bandwidth of 20% (18–22 GHz). The beam scanning range is ±30° in both ϕ = 0°and ϕ = 90°planes. The proposed phased array antenna has advantages of wide impedance bandwidth and wide AR bandwidth, which has potential application value in satellite communication.