Characterization of Tapered Slot Arrays on Protuding Substrates

摘要

Endfire tapered slot antennas have demonstrated an unusual ability to performwell in wideband, wide-scan phased array antennas. Although these antennas have been in existence for 20 years and have been studied experimentally for most of that time, computational capabilities have only recently progressed to the point where numerical modeling of these antennas is feasible. This project was undertaken to investigate some of the fundamental parameters of tapered slot antenna arrays so that antenna designers and system planners can better understand how these antennas perform, what are their present limitations, and how can the best performance be obtained. Specifically, this project has: (1) Performed extensive parameter studies of single-polarized arrays, leading to a much better understanding of antenna design and performance, (2) Extended the analysis capability from single-polarized arrays to dual-polarized arrays, and (3) Conducted experimental studies to validate the computations and to discover new information. Many new results have been published in papers resulting from this project. Several scan blindnesses have been identified and one entire class of blindnesses has been characterized so.