Design of Ka-Band Phased Array Antenna with Calibration Function

In this paper,we have proposed a novel structure of Ka-band based phased array antenna with calibration function.In the design of Kaband antenna,the active phased array system is adopted and the antenna would work in the dual polarization separation mode.We have given out the schematic diagram for the proposed Ka-band antenna,where the Kaband antenna is in the form of waveguide slot array antenna,with 96 units in azimuth and 1 unit in distance.Each group of units is driven by a singlechannel Transmitter/Receiver(T/R)component,and the whole array contains 192 T/R components in total.The size of the T/R component is 55mm(length)×50mm(width)×5.8mm(height),3 Sub-micro Sub-Miniature Push-on(SSMP)blind sockets and a 21-core low-frequency socket are designed on the two sides of the T/R component.In order to meet the technical specifications of phased array antenna,the Ka-band transceiver component is designed based on Low Temperatrue Co-fired Ceramic(LTCC)technology to achieve miniaturization and lightweight.In our approach,the feed network includes two parts:transceiver network and calibration network.The transceiver network consists of 241:8 time-delay power dividers,12 two-way power dividers and 2 six-way time-delay power dividers.The power supply required by theKaband antenna unit is provided to each active component by the power module after Ka band wavelet control distribution.Simulation and measurement results are given in the form of standing wave and scanning capability.

A Combined Antenna Array Deployment with High Positioning Accuracy and Low Angular Measurement Error

In this paper,an antenna array composed of circular array and orthogonal linear array is proposed by using the design of long and short baseline“orthogonal linear array”and the circular array ambiguity resolution design of multi-group baseline clustering.The effectiveness of the antenna array in this paper is verified by sufficient simulation and experiment.After the system deviation correction work,it is found that in the L/S/C/X frequency bands,the ambiguity resolution probability is high,and the phase difference system error between each channel is basically the same.The angle measurement error is less than 0.5°,and the positioning error is less than 2.5 km.Notably,as the center frequency increases,calibration consistency improves,and the calibration frequency points become applicable over a wider frequency range.At a center frequency of 11.5 GHz,the calibration frequency point bandwidth extends to 1200 MHz.This combined antenna array deployment holds significant promise for a wide range of applications in contemporary wireless communication systems.

Analysis of electrical performances of planar active phased array antennas with distorted array plane

The influence of the distorted plane of the active phased array antenna on the electromagnetic performance is of great significance to the research on and development of the high-performance antennas. On the bent and bowl-shape distortion, the model is established of the relationship between the electromagnetic performance and the position error of the radiated elements. The method is presented of analyzing the far-field pattern of the distorted rectangular active phased array antenna. The analysis results of a planar phased array antenna with different distortions grades prove the validity of the model. Therefore, by the method, the antenna designers may set the reasonable requirement on the structural tolerance in manufacturing antenna.

GA-based approach to phase compensation of large phased array antennas

The investigation of the effect of electrical and mechanical errors on the performance of a large active phased array antenna is studied. These errors can decrease the antenna performance, for instance, the gain reduction, side lobe level enhancement, and incorrect beam direction. In order to improve the performance of the antenna in the presence of these errors, phase error correction of large phased array antennas using the genetic algorithm（GA） is implemented. By using the phase compensation method, the antenna overall radiation pattern is recovered close to the ideal radiation pattern without error. By applying the simulation data to a 32×40 array of elements with a square grid at the frequency of S-band and measurement of the radiation pattern, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified.

A Novel 28 GHz Phased Array Antenna for 5G Mobile Communications

A novel phased array antenna consisting of 256 elements is presented and experimentally verified for 5G millimeter-wave wireless communications.The antenna integrated with a wave control circuit can perform real-time beam scanning by reconfiguring the phase of an antenna unit.The unit,designed at 28 GHz using a simple patch structure with one PIN diode,can be electronically controlled to generate 1 bit phase quantization.A prototype of the antenna is fabricated and measured to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.The measurement results indicate that the antenna achieves high gain and fast beam-steering,with the scan beams within±60°range and the maximum gain up to 21.7 dBi.Furthermore,it is also tested for wireless video transmission.In ZTE Shanghai,the antenna was used for the 5G New Radio(NR)test.The error vector magnitude(EVM)is less than 3%and the adjacent channel leakage ratio(ACLR)less than−35 dBc,which can meet 5G system requirements.Compared with the conventional phased array antenna,the proposed phased array has the advantages of low power consumption,low cost and conformal geometry.Due to these characteristics,the antenna is promising for wide applications in 5G millimeter-wave communication systems.

Particle simulations on propagation and resonance of lower hybrid wave launched by phased array antenna in linear devices

In this work, we performed first-principles electromagnetic-kinetic simulations to study a phased antenna array and its interaction with deuterium plasmas within the lower hybrid range of frequency. We first gave wave accessibility and resonance results, which agree well with theoretical prediction. In addition, we further investigated the antenna power spectrum with different antenna phases in the presence of the plasma and compared it with that in a vacuum,which directly indicates wave coupling and plasma absorption. Furthermore, for the case with zero phasing difference, our simulation results show that, albeit the launch is away from the accessibility region, tunneling effect and mode conversion occurred, which enhanced coupling and absorption. Moreover, consistent interactions between the injected wave and the plasma concerning various antenna phase differences are shown. We presented the inchoate response of the plasma in terms of the launching directions. Our results could be favorable for the engineering design of wave heating experiments with a tunable phased antenna array in linear devices, such as simple magnetic mirrors or tandem mirrors.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF ANNULAR PHASED ARRAY OF DIPOLE ANTENNAS USING THE FD-TD METHOD

The problem for calculating near fields of EM radiation systems by using the finitedifference time domain(FD-TD)method are discussed and the annular phased array of dipoleantennas has been simulated numerically by use of the FD-TD method.For a test run thenear field and current distribution of the single dipole antenna are calculated.The near fieldsof the annular phased array of dipole antennas in central region filled with deionized water arecomputed and the interaction of near fields with an anatomically-based inhomogeneous model ofhuman torso is considered as well.

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF MULTI-STEP AMPLITUDE QUANTIZATION WEIGHTED 2-D SOLID-STATE ACTIVE PHASED ARRAY ANTENNAS

An aperture design technique using multi-step amplitude quantization for two-dimensional solid-state active phased arrays to achieve low sidelobe is described. It can be applied to antennas with arbitrary complex aperture. Also, the gain drop and sidelobe degradation due to random amplitude and phase errors and element (or T/R module) failures are investigated.

Vehicular Radio Scanner Using Phased Array Antenna for Dedicated Short Range Communication Service

Now a day’s accidents are very common due to increased population of vehicle. In order to ensure safety measures in the vehicle this paper has proposed some methodologies regarding careful driving by automatically scanning and analyzing the blind spot area of an intelligent mobile vehicle. A vehicular antenna with minimum perturbation is proposed to be fitted on the vehicle and collect information of the concern area which would ensure visibility of the operator i.e. masked or integrated within the car body. This paper has dealt with the design of Tchebyscheff polynomial based prototype planar microstrip phased array antenna and also redesigned the same when implemented in the body of the car being considered as an electromagnetically large element. Both the design has been experimentally verified with the measurement. The simulated and the measured results in both the cases are found to be in good agreement. More than 11 dB gain was observed at perfectly 30° angles from its broad side direction as desired for blind spot detection with minimum amount of electromagnetic interference inside the car.

Tile Type Multi-Channel Transceiver Module Applied for Phased Array Antenna

In order to reduce the volume and weight of phase array antenna in RF frequency, an integrated technology of multi-channel transceiver circuit and power division network in microwave is proposed for the tile type TR module. The component is integrated in a same dielectric substrate, the mounting interface of chips and power division network are on the same layer. Finally, a 8 × 8 array has been manufactured and tested to validate its function. The results show the integrated technology has good performance. It is very good to satisfy the miniaturization and lightweight of the T/R module in the active phased array antenna.

Miniaturized Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Antenna

In this article we propose a miniaturized dual-band electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna. The antenna can generate up to two steerable beams. The beam-steering range of the proposed antenna is 360˚ in the azimuth plane. The antenna’s eual-band coverage includes the frequency ranges from 2.3 GHz to 2.53 GHz and from 2.9 GHz to 3.7 GHz. The antenna consists of six folded parasitic monopole elements surrounding an active conical element. The folded monopole element design offers three times lower antenna height than that of the conventional ESPAR antennas. The active element has conical shape and it is larger in length than the parasitic monopole elements, this enables the dual-band operation. Thus, the proposed design is not only smaller than the conventional ESPAR antennas but it also achieves dual-band operation. Despite its compact design, the antenna has a peak gain of 6.3 dBi, which is equivalent to the gain of conventional ESPAR antennas. These characteristics make the antenna a good candidate for next generation communication systems.

A Precise Calibration Method on Phase Center of Uplink Antenna Array Considering Its Actual Pointing

With regard to the inferior techniques and low accuracy of phase center calibration of an antenna array, this paper proposes a new calibration method considering the actual antenna pointing by introducing a precise engineering surveying technique to measure the real state of antennas. First, an industrial photogrammetric system is utilized to obtain the coordinates of points on antenna panels in different postures, and the actual pointing of the mechanical axis is obtained via least-squares fitting. Then, based on this, the coordinates of antenna rotation center are obtained by seeking the intersection of mechanical axes via using the matrix method. Finally, the mechanical axis in arbitrary postures is estimated based on the inverse-angle weighting interpolation method, and the reliable phase center is obtained by moving a fixed length from the projective center along the mechanical axis. An uplink antenna array including three ? 3 m antennas is taken as experimental object, and all photogrammetric coordinate systems are unified by the engineering control network, with each antenna phase center precisely calibrated via the proposed method. The results of electrical signal synthesis indicate that this method can effectively overcome the influence of gravity deformation and mechanical installation error, and enhance the synthetic signal magnitude of the uplink antenna array.

A Highly Efficient Algorithm for Phased-Array mmWave Massive MIMO Beamforming

With the rapid development of the mobile internet and the internet of things(IoT),the fifth generation(5G)mobile communication system is seeing explosive growth in data traffic.In addition,low-frequency spectrum resources are becoming increasingly scarce and there is now an urgent need to switch to higher frequency bands.Millimeter wave(mmWave)technology has several outstanding features—it is one of the most well-known 5G technologies and has the capacity to fulfil many of the requirements of future wireless networks.Importantly,it has an abundant resource spectrum,which can significantly increase the communication rate of a mobile communication system.As such,it is now considered a key technology for future mobile communications.MmWave communication technology also has a more open network architecture;it can deliver varied services and be applied in many scenarios.By contrast,traditional,all-digital precoding systems have the drawbacks of high computational complexity and higher power consumption.This paper examines the implementation of a new hybrid precoding system that significantly reduces both calculational complexity and energy consumption.The primary idea is to generate several sub-channels with equal gain by dividing the channel by the geometric mean decomposition(GMD).In this process,the objective function of the spectral efficiency is derived,then the basic tracking principle and least square(LS)techniques are deployed to design the proposed hybrid precoding.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves system performance and reduces computational complexity by more than 45%compared to traditional algorithms.

Sparse Planar Retrodirective Antenna Array Using Improved Adaptive Genetic Algorithm

An improved adaptive genetic algorithm is presented in this paper. It primarily includes two modified methods： one is novel adaptive probabilities of crossover and mutation, the other is truncated selection approach. This algorithm has been validated to be superior to the simple genetic algorithm （SGA） by a complicated binary testing function. Then the proposed algorithm is applied to optimizing the planar retrodirective array to reduce the cost of the hardware. The fitness function is discussed in the optimization example. After optimization, the sparse planar retrodirective antenna array keeps excellent retrodirectivity, while the array architecture has been simplified by 34%. The optimized antenna array can replace uniform full array effectively. Results show that this work will gain more engineering benefits in practice.

Antenna Array Pattern Synthesis via Coordinate Descent Method

This paper presents an array pattern synthesis algorithm for arbitrary arrays based on coordinate descent method (CDM). With this algorithm, the complex element weights are found to minimize a weighted L2 norm of the difference between desired and achieved pattern. Compared with traditional optimization techniques, CDM is easy to implement and efficient to reach the optimum solutions. Main advantage is the flexibility. CDM is suitable for linear and planar array with arbitrary array elements on arbitrary positions. With this method, we can configure arbitrary beam pattern, which gives it the ability to solve variety of beam forming problem, e.g. focused beam, shaped beam, nulls at arbitrary direction and with arbitrary beam width. CDM is applicable for phase-only and amplitude-only arrays as well, and furthermore, it is a suitable method to treat the problem of array with element failures.

BEAM BROADENING SYNTHESIS FOR SAR ANTENNA ARRAY BASED ON PROJECTION MATRIX ALGORITHM

A new beam broadening synthesis technique for Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) antenna array, namely Projection Matrix Algorithm(PMA) is presented. The theory of PMA is introduced firstly, and then the iterative renewed manner is improved to resolve the unbalance problem under amplitude and phase control. In order to validate the algorithm correct and effective, an actual engineering application example is investigated. The beam synthesis results of 1.0~4.5 times broadening under the phase only control and the amplitude and phase control using improved PMA are given. The results show that the beam directivity, the beam broadening, and the side-lobe level requirements were met. It is demonstrated that the improved PMA was effective and feasible for SAR application.

Performance analysis of the mutual coupling effect on Phased Array Feeds

A phased array feed(PAF)is a type of receiving array that places phased array antennas on the focal plane of a radio telescope to expand its field of view and improve observation efficiency.Owing to the mutual coupling effect between elements caused by a tightly arranged feed array,which changes the performance of a PAF,this paper presents a 7×7 rectangular feed array model for a 25 m reflector telescope.By adjusting the element spacings,the performance of a PAF with different spacings is comprehensively analyzed with respect to the mutual coupling effect via performance statistics and comparison.This research aims to provide a reference for the preliminary design of a related PAF.

Photonic microwave true time delays for phased array antennas using a 49 GHz FSR integrated optical micro-comb source[Invited]

We demonstrate significantly improved performance of a microwave true time delay line based on an integrated optical frequency comb source. The broadband micro-comb(over 100 nm wide) features a record low free spectral range(FSR) of 49 GHz, resulting in an unprecedented record high channel number(81 over the C band)—the highest number of channels for an integrated comb source used for microwave signal processing. We theoretically analyze the performance of a phased array antenna and show that this large channel count results in a high angular resolution and wide beam-steering tunable range. This demonstrates the feasibility of our approach as a competitive solution toward implementing integrated photonic true time delays in radar and communications systems.

Reconfigurable Pattern Patch Antenna for Mid-Band 5G:A Review

New requirements in communication technologies make it imperative to rehash conventional features such as reconfigurable antennas to adapt with the future adaptability advancements.This paper presents a comprehensive review of reconfigurable antennas,specifically in terms of radiation patterns for adaptation in the upcoming Fifth Generation(5G)New Radio frequency bands.They represent the key of antenna technology for materializing a high rate transmission,increased spectral and energy efficiency,reduced interference,and improved the beam steering and beam shaping,thereby land a great promise for planar antennas to boost the mid-band 5G.This review begins with an overview of the underlying principals in reconfiguring radiation patterns,followed by the presentations of the implemented innovative antenna topologies to suit particular advanced features.The various adaptation techniques of radiation pattern reconfigurable planar antennas and the understanding of its antenna design approaches has been investigated for its radiation pattern enhancement.A variety of design configurations have also been critically studied for their compatibilities to be operated in the midband communication systems.The review provides new insights on pattern reconfigurable antenna where such antennas are categorized as beam steering antenna and beamshaping antennas where the operation modes and purposes are clearly investigated.The review also revealed that for mid-band 5G communication,the commonly used electronic switching such as PIN diodes have sufficient isolation loss to provide the required beam performance.

Material Equivalent Test Based on Dimensional Analysis for Fragment Penetrating Antenna Target

Phased array radar is the main sensor in a battlefield.Phased array antenna is the main execution unit of the phased array radar,and it greatly affects the reliability of the phased array radar. As a result,the fragment damaged antenna test is important.As the materials of phased array antenna are not easy to get,the fragment damaged antenna test is difficult to carry out. Then we present a study on this problem and introduce the principles of dimensional analysis to solve it. Firstly, the fragments damage antenna target dimensionless model is constructed. Secondly,the finite element analysis software ANSYS / LS-DYNA are used to carry out a large number of different materials simulation test for dimensional analysis. Finally,based on dimensional test analysis,the materials equivalent empirical model between different antennas target is presented in the same damage. The results of this study provide a feasible and valuable solution for different materials' target damaged test.