Rectangular Slot Array Antenna

摘要

Slot antenna elements are quite popular for use inflat-panel arrays, due to their compactness and relatively largebandwidth. According to Babinet’s Principle, slots and dipolesare duals in performance. Therefore, a vertically placed slot ishorizontally polarized and a horizontally placed slot is verticallypolarized. A rectangular slot array lends itself to a broad rangeof applications, e.g., tactical and weather radar. Such arrays canbe gimbaled to point their beam in any azimuth and elevationangle of interest. In this effort, a slot antenna element is designedin WIPL-D Pro to operate over the 7.5 - 8.5 GHz frequencyrange. The element is designed to resonate at 8 GHz. The slotelement is used to generate a 6x12 slot array normal to thexy-plane. Separate Taylor tapers (nbar = 5) are applied to the6-row and 12-column elements to provide 25 dB and 30 dBsidelobe level (SLL) suppression, respectively. The inputimpedance and pattern performance for a single slot, as wellas the slot array’s radiation performance show excellentbroadband performance.