Multibeam Continuous Transverse Stub Array With High-Power Applications

This article presents a high-power slow-wave structure (SWS) of a parallel plate waveguide (PPW), on which a high-power multi-beam antenna array is suggested. The SWS is non-uniform sine curves with a height difference between two metal plates of PPW, which effectively increases the current path, so that the guided wavelength within the PPW can be reduced. The curves on the inner surfaces of the two metal plates are staggered along the propagation direction to maintain a uniform electric field distribution. The impacts of geometrical sizes on the slow-wave effect, transmission characteristic and power capacity are analyzed in theory and verified by HFSS simulation. Continuous transverse stubs (CTSs) are arrayed on the upper plate with an element spacing of 0.8<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda _{0}$</tex-math></inline-formula> for radiation. Multi-beam steering is realized by a pillbox parabolic reflector-based line source generator (LSG) with 7 ports. A prototype of 10 elements CTS array at 9.5 GHz is fabricated to validate the design. A <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm 34^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> beam coverage range with the peak gain variation of 5 dB is measured. The antenna array has a high power density of 988 kW/cm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>.