Phased arrays around the world - progress and future trends

摘要

This is a survey paper summarizing the developments and future trends in passive, active bipolar and monolithic microwave integrated circuitry (MMIC) phased arrays for ground, ship, air, and space applications. Covered is the DD(X) ship radar suite; THAAD (formerly GBR); European COBRA; Israel BMD radar antennas; Dutch shipboard APAR; airborne US F- 22, JSF and F-18 radars, European AMSAR, Swedish AESA, Japan FSX and Israel Phalcon; Iridium (66 satellites in orbit for total of 198 antennas) and Globalstar MMIC spaceborne active array systems (these last two are communications but the technology is the same as used by radar systems, in fact the IRIDIUM T/R module technology derives from technology developed for a space based radar); Thales (formerly Thomson-CSF) 4 inch MMIC wafer 94 GHz seeker antenna; digital beamforming; ferroelectric row-column scanning; optical electronic scanning for communications and radar; the MMIC C-band to Ku-band Advanced Shared Aperture Program (ASAP) and AMRFS antenna systems for shared use for communications, radar, electronics countermeasures (ECM) and ESM; and continuous transverse stub (CTS) voltage-variable dielectric (VVD) antenna.