Recent developments and future trends in phased arrays

Brookner, Eli

doi:10.1109/array.2013.6731797

Cited by 33 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…In accordance with [1] until 2013 in U.S. more than 500 aircraft AESAs have been deployed with > 400,000 operating hours. Nearby 2 million T/R Modules have been manufactured therefore.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

SMTR® module - Evolution towards airborne applications

Rieger

Schuh

Oppermann

2014

2014 International Radar Conference

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Modern active electronically steered antennas (AESA) operate in different platforms and systems. Inside AIRBUS Defence & Space, the focus on X-band antennas today is on airborne and fighter nose radars, in satellite based SAR antennas (synthetic aperture radar) for earth observation, and ground surveillance and security radars.Active airborne antennas are assembled with hundreds or even thousands of transmit/receive modules. This paper will describe the evolution of the so-called standardized module solution based on LTCC package technology with special regard to airborne applications and the correlated needs. This evolution especially contains significant optimization steps concerning area, weight and cost. By realization of an SMTR® Module suitable to a folded plank concept a significant reduction of installation depth could be achieved. As the module weight is dominated by its package, technology evaluation and implementation of advantageous concepts and materials was performed, here. Cost reduction is always a key focus of T/R module evolution as the modules still allocate a big part of antenna's production cost. Some steps have been realised here both on technology and component level.The next generation of AESA antennas will result in a combination of different operating modes within the same antenna front end, including radar, communication (data links), and jamming (electronic warfare, EW). This leads to enhanced demands especially towards the MMICs. The RF section of today's T/R modules for AESA applications is typically based on GaAs technology. During the last 10 years there was much progress in the development of disruptive semiconductor materials, especially GaN and SiGe BiCMOS, which have the potential to challenge or even replace the GaAs technology, here. This paper will describe and show this evolution through the last years and shall give an outlook towards future developments with regard to airborne applications.

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“…In accordance with [1] until 2013 in U.S. more than 500 aircraft AESAs have been deployed with > 400,000 operating hours. Nearby 2 million T/R Modules have been manufactured therefore.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

SMTR® module - Evolution towards airborne applications

Rieger

Schuh

Oppermann

2014

2014 International Radar Conference

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“…Wideband array antennas have found many applications during the last decades [5][6][7][8]. Using a wideband array antenna, one can share a single aperture for multiple functions, resulting in cost and size reduction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Connected Arrays and Capacitively Coupled Arrays

Hosseini

Atlasbaf²

2022

IEEE Access

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The concept of connected and capacitively coupled dipoles in a planar array, which improves wideband performance, is investigated. A long wire with multiple feeds acts as an array in connected arrays, whereas a capacitively coupled array uses capacitors between array elements. Both approaches attempt to approximate the current sheet of Wheeler. Using spectral Green's function, the array active impedance is calculated. The impedance mismatch of a connected/capacitively coupled dipole array is less than that of an array of unconnected dipoles of the same size. Both direct and capacitive connections can be used to design a wideband array antenna with a ground plane, although capacitive coupling performs better than a direct connection. This fact resulted from numerous analytical studies using infinite dipole array scan (active) impedance endorsed by full-wave simulations using CST MWS. The maximum mismatch losses over the frequency band for different source (reference) impedances are used to find the best solution at the broadside. To consider the scan performance, the average reflected power over all scan angles is applied, and then, the maximum average mismatch loss over the frequency band is investigated.

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“…Four phased antenna arrays [1], in which each individual array [2,3] covers �45°scanning region in the azimuth plane, are capable to provide a full-space surveillance and has been widely deployed in military, commercial and other application fields in the past several decades [4]. However, one drawback when the main beam scans to �45°from boresight is the scan loss around 3 dB compared to the peak gain [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a phased array antenna with scan loss reduction and gain enhancement by using reconfigurable subarrays

Chu

Shao

Zhu

et al. 2022

IET Microwaves Antenna & Prop

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In order to reduce the scan loss and also obtain higher scanning gain for a phased array, a subarray design is proposed in this study. Different from the prior works, the number of active phase shifters utilised in this topology is identical to its counterpart without subarrays, which makes it more cost-effective. To achieve this valuable characteristic, a reconfigurable beam-former is proposed to enable the radiation pattern of a subarray to be switchable to different modes for different scanning regions. The proposed beamformer is based on substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) and featured by extremely low-loss, due to its unique working mechanism. For validation, a fully integrated subarray module consisting of a beam-former and two Yagi-Uda antennas is designed and analysed. Furthermore, in order to show the effectiveness, five subarray modules with uniform spacing are utilised to construct a complete prototype operating at 15 GHz. Measurement results of the entire array indicate that the achieved gain is 2~3 dB higher than its counterpart without the subarray, from −45°to +45°in the beam-scanning plane. Meanwhile, the scan loss is decreased from �1.45 dB to smaller than �0.9 dB. Meanwhile, sidelobe levels are also improved for scanning angles between �45°. It should be pointed out that the proposed approach is also applicable to broaden the scanning angle of phased arrays with properly selected antenna elements. Since there is no need to increase the number of active phase shifters, this subarray-based approach can be considered more economic, and is very attractive for a variety of phased array systems.

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Recent developments and future trends in phased arrays

Cited by 33 publications

References 9 publications

SMTR® module - Evolution towards airborne applications

SMTR® module - Evolution towards airborne applications

Analysis of Connected Arrays and Capacitively Coupled Arrays

Design of a phased array antenna with scan loss reduction and gain enhancement by using reconfigurable subarrays

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Recent developments and future trends in phased arrays

Cited by 33 publications

References 9 publications

SMTR&#x00AE; module - Evolution towards airborne applications

SMTR&#x00AE; module - Evolution towards airborne applications

Analysis of Connected Arrays and Capacitively Coupled Arrays

Design of a phased array antenna with scan loss reduction and gain enhancement by using reconfigurable subarrays

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

SMTR® module - Evolution towards airborne applications

SMTR® module - Evolution towards airborne applications