Design of a 2*2 Microstrip Phased Array Antenna for Radar Applications

Abstract

Micro-strips patch antennae used in array configurations are more beneficial than single antenna element by augmenting the directivity (dB) radiation pattern, and lowering the substrate's permittivity to overcome its drawbacks, which include poor gain, low efficiency, narrow bandwidth limited directivity. It also facilitates beam-steering capability which is obtained by enabling phase difference(β) between the antennas. Beam scanning capability is used in radar and GNSS technologies. This paper proposes a 2*2 microstrip phased array antenna by using rectangular microstrip patch antenna on an FR-4 dielectric substrate for beam scanning. The resonant frequency of the antenna is at 2.52GHz frequency with a good Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) value of 1.1325. The design has been simulated in Ansys HFSS software. The simulation results exhibit antenna better performance of the proposed antenna compared to state-of-art designs present in the literature. The compactly designed Rectangular Micro-strip Patch Antenna array shows a low S-parameter (–24.127858 dB), high gain (13.689104 dB), directivity (14.055125 dB), and efficiency of 91.917%.