What is it about?
Planar antenna or arrays become increasingly important in many sectors, in particular for large-scale implementations such as Square Kilometre Array (SKA) where 2D structures are favorable. However, an equally challenging aspect to employ such antenna in addition to radiator design is how to feed. A coplanar waveguide (CPW) is proposed in this study which was based on low-cost flexible material, the benefits are two fold: transformation from differential mode at radiator side to single-ended mode at receiver side; impedance transformation is realized to make the antenna viable to connect with receiver front-end with a customized characteristic impedance.
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Why is it important?
It paved the way to make large-scale antenna arrays completely with printing technology instead of using the relatively expensive conventional PCB process.
Perspectives
Over the past few decades, condensed aperture array has gradually been becoming a frontier technology in radio astronomy. There were few designs in the community, however, they are mainly variations of Vivaldi antenna, and it is based on a 3D structure and not convenient for large-scale implementations. Aperture arrays with a 2D planar structure are desired for its low-profile and economic benefit. How to feed such structure has been an obstacle for its application in practice. This work explored the possibility to use flexible feed line design which gives a solution towards wholly printed arrays for large-scale implementations.
David Zhang
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bent coplanar waveguide feeds for balanced planar antennas and arrays, Electronics Letters, September 2022, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (the IET),
DOI: 10.1049/ell2.12613.
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