Aa Unbalanced Feed Design for Wideband Phased Arrays

Abstract: In this work, a planar phased array antenna was engineered with ultra-wideband (UWB) performance that covers portions of the L-, S-, and C-bands. The unit cell design contains a driven layer that is directly connected to a single coaxial feed and a parasitic layer located above the driven layer separated by free space. This design does not require a balun or any vias between the antenna ground plane and the driven layer, resulting in a simple antenna stack-up consisting of only planar layers, aside from the feed structure. As a consequence, the complexity, and potentially sensitivity to mechanical tolerances, is reduced. The simulated results of this unbalanced phased array are discussed and experimentally validated.