Beam steering cuboid antenna array for L band RADAR

Abstract

In surveillance systems and electronic warfare systems radars with complete 360° beam steering capabilities are essential. Antenna arrays which are capable of beam steering in complete azimuth plane and elevation plane are required. For this purpose, phased array antennas are been used but the complex feed network used in phased array antenna will introduce adverse effects on antenna array performance and there are limitations on the beam steering capabilities of the planar antenna arrays because of their physical geometry. To overcome this limitation of physical geometry in this paper, an L Band cuboid antenna array is presented for the frequency of 1.35 GHz. Proposed antenna array does not need any complex feed network and phase shifter circuits to steer the beam of the antenna array. Instead, it takes advantage of the proposed cuboid geometry and full axis beam steering is achieved by switching the antenna elements in the array. Simulated array patterns like gain, return loss, mutual coupling, VSWR, and radiation pattern are explained in detail.