A Low-cost Ka-band Circularly Polarized Passive Phased-Array Antenna for Mobile Satellite Applications

摘要： This paper presents a low-profile, high-performance, and low-cost Ka-band circularly polarized (CP) passive phased-array antenna (PAA) system. A 1 × 4 passive sub-array operating at the Ka-band frequency band is investigated, developed, and tested as a possible building block for mobile satellite communication systems. In particular, a CP antenna integrated with a high-performance passive phase shifter is presented and experimentally verified. A new low-cost and low-profile magnetic actuator is proposed to precisely control the phase state of the phase shifter. A 3-D printed polymer package is utilized to enclose the phase shifter and reduce the environmental effects. The proposed CP passive PAA achieves high performance right hand circularly polarized (RHCP) radiation with high cross-polarization discrimination over a wide scan angle from 0o to ±38o over the frequency band (29.5-30.5 GHz). An AR < 3dB is demonstrated over the entire scanning range. Moreover, the measured radiation efficiency is 60% at bore-sight. The gain drops by 1 dB at ±38o scanning angles.