A Planar Phased Array With Wide Scanning Range and Low Cross Polarization

A low cross-polarization planar phased array having 2-D ultrawide scanning ability is proposed in this article. Firstly, a patch element is developed with two shorted vias and a pair of planar II-shaped metal via-strips (MVSs) for achieving a widebeam performance for the beam-scanning. The radiation gain and beamwidth of the element can be flexibly adjusted by designing the MVSs. Then, a 32×16 planar array is designed with wide beamscanning performance by using the proposed element. Experimental results show that the proposed array can scan from -80<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> to +80<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> and from -75<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> to +75<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> with a gain fluctuation less than 4.5 dB and 4.9 dB in the E- and H-planes, respectively. Meanwhile, it has a cross-polarization level below -27 dB. The proposed antenna shows merits of 2-D ultrawide scanning range, low crosspolarization level and low profile, which is a good candidate for wireless communication and sensing applications.