A Shared Aperture Microstrip Antenna Array with Multiple Polarisations and Near-Field Beam Steering

Abstract

In this paper we present a shared-aperture polarisation reconfigurable microstrip array designed to resonate at 11.5 GHz with a gain bandwidth of 2 GHz (~17%). The polarisation reconfigurability (both linear and circular) is achieved using two orthogonal and independently-fed sub-arrays that are intertwined together on the same aperture. Each subarray is fed through one port and a feed network that distributes the power among the array elements incorporating Taylor taper distribution to minimize the sidelobe level. The array has low cross-polarisation level (<-20 dB) and good port isolation (<-24 dB). The shared aperture and absence of active switching devices provide better control of polarisation selection with almost no insertion loss. A near-field metasurface based steering system is also presented and applied to the array for one- and two-dimensional beam steering. The results are verified through model simulations and measurement of the fabricated prototypes.