Wideband, wide scanning conformal arrays with practical integrated feeds

Wideband, wide scanning conformal arrays with practical integrated feeds Conference

Doane, JP, Moulder, WF, Sertel, K et al. (2013). Wideband, wide scanning conformal arrays with practical integrated feeds . 859-862.

A key challenge in designing wideband dipole arrays is developing a wideband balun that is sufficiently compact to fit within a single unit cell. A new technique has recently been developed which uses the the reactance of a compact balun as an impedance matching network to improve the bandwidth of a Tightly Coupled Dipole Array (TCDA). In this paper, we apply this technique to two TCDA designs, with and without resistive loading. The first design uses a compact balun and low-loss materials to achieve 7.2/1 bandwidth, with VSWR<2.6/1 while scanning to ±45° in all planes. The second design uses a similar balun design along with a resistive sheet placed below the dipoles, achieving a bandwidth of 14.2/1 with VSWR<2.4/1 at broadside, and > 70% efficiency across most of the band. © 2013 IEICE.