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A novel broadband low-profile dual-circularly polarized active phased array modular subarray

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 December 2025

Yunqi Zhang Open the ORCID record for Yunqi Zhang [Opens in a new window] ,
Quanbo Liu ,
Xinwei Wang ,
Shanzhe Wang ,
Zhian Wang ,
Wenjia Zhou  and
Jiateng Chen
Yunqi Zhang*
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China
Quanbo Liu
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China
Xinwei Wang
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China
Shanzhe Wang
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China The National Key Laboratory of Automatic Target Recognition (ATR), College of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China
Zhian Wang
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China
Wenjia Zhou
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China
Jiateng Chen
Affiliation:
School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications, Xi’an, China
*
Corresponding author: Yunqi Zhang; Email: zhangyunqi@xupt.edu.cn
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Abstract

This paper proposes a broadband, low-profile, dual-circularly polarized (CP) active phased array modular subarray. The subarray elements adopt dual-CP stacked microstrip patch antennas to expand the bandwidth. Each subarray has a complete structure and function, which can be used independently or extended to meet the requirements of different application scenarios. The impact of asymmetric plane is counteracted by a mirror-feed technique, which improves the consistency of scanning gain and axial ratio (AR) at both positive and negative angles. Meanwhile, the subarray can simultaneously form two beams of left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) and right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) for scanning. Finally, a modular subarray prototype with an 8 × 8 array scale was simulated, fabricated, and measured. The simulation results show that the scanning gain decreases by less than 2.19 dB at ±45° and 5.4 dB at ±60° at the frequency of 12.1 GHz. Moreover, within the frequency range of 10.23–12.77 GHz (22.08%), the active voltage standing wave ratios (VSWR) of LHCP and RHCP in the azimuth and elevation dimensions of the subarray are below 2, and the AR in the beam scanning range of ±45° and ±60° are less than 3 and 6 dB, respectively.

Keywords

broadband low-profile antennadual circular polarization antennamodular subarrayphased array

Information

Type
Research Paper
Information
International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies , Volume 17 , Issue 8 , October 2025 , pp. 1384 - 1391
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with The European Microwave Association.

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