Circularly polarized 4 × 8 stacked patch antenna phased array with enhanced bandwidth for commercial drones

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the design procedure of a 4 × 8 phased array antenna. Initially, a unit element in multilayer topology with orthogonal slots in the ground plane to couple electromagnetic energy is designed. Then, a stacked patch with truncated edges is placed on the top thick substrate layer to enhance the bandwidth to 600 MHz. This multilayered stacked patch unit element is then used to design a 1 × 4 and 4 × 8 slot coupled stacked patch array.On the bottom side, a novel feedline structure is designed to provide a 90 o phase difference at the antenna feed for the circular polarization. The phase difference is achieved in the feedline structure using a quarter wavelength (λ g /4) difference in the lengths. After the numerical validation, both 1 × 4 and 4 × 8 stacked patch antenna arrays are fabricated to validate the simulations.The final 4 × 8 array achieved the target specification of an active reflection of less than −10 dB over 2.4 to 3.0 GHz, axial ratio of less than 3 dB, and stable radiation pattern over the complete band. In addition, beam scanning characteristics of the proposed stacked patch antenna arrays are also verified. The prototype resulted a peak gain of 19.5 dB at 2.7 GHz, 3-dB beamwidth around 12 o in the xz-plane, and scanning range of 90 o . Overall, good agreement between measured and simulated results showed that the proposed designed array capable of providing 600 MHz is an excellent candidate for the radar communication, small commercial drones, and synthetic aperture radar applications. K E Y W O R D Scircularly polarized, couple slot stacked patch antenna, enhanced bandwidth, printed phased array

Review of Patch Antennas used in Drone Applications

“…Fig. 28 A 4 × 8 phased array antenna is shown here, along with its design process [39]. First, an electromagnetic energycoupling unit element in a multilayer architecture with orthogonal slots in the ground plane is created and the physical dimension shown in Fig.…”

High Gain Microstrip Quad Array Antenna for Sub-6 GHz 5G Applications

“…In addition, the implementation of different substrates can affect the performance of the antennas in terms of the overall antennas gain, it is shown in the [9] that with the implementation of the air as a substrate the gain of the antenna is significantly increased implying that not only the modification of the certain geometry affects the gain but also the dielectric substrates utilized in the design. The implementation of the microstrip antenna provided in [13], [14] and [15] imply that the polarization and the geometrical structure greatly affect return loss and bandwidth leading to the intensive simulation process prior to the manufacturing the proposed design. It is worth mentioning by comprehending the mathematical relationship deriving the simplistic microstrip structures such as rectangular microstrip antennas, one may devise various designs just by stacking numerous of the squared patches leading to the increased gain of the antenna and the frequency of the design is somewhat affected [16].…”

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“…11 In the literature, on one hand, several planar phased arrays with dualÀ/multi-band and wideband elements are reported. [12][13][14][15][16][17] In, 12,13 Valavan et al presented two dual-band phased arrays with widescanning capabilities. The designed phased arrays both support the wide-angle scan up to a maximum of 60 and 50 at the low-and high-frequency bands, respectively.…”