A 4×4 L-Band Dual-Polarized Array with Digital Transmit/Receive Beamforming Using RFSoC

A 4×4 L-band dual-polarized differential-fed patch antenna array with full digital beamforming using radio frequency system-on-chip (RFSoC) is presented. Each of the 16 dual-polarized antenna units has good impedance matching from 1.2 to 1.3 GHz with an isolation larger than 30 dB. The array performance is first validated using analog beamforming at boresight using a 1:16 power divider. The measured realized gain is more than 16.8 dBi within the 1.2 to 1.3 GHz bandwidth. Subsequently, the array is combined with the ZCU216 RFSoC and full digital beamforming for both transmit and receive is demonstrated with independent beamforming capability for each polarization.