Electronically steerable planar phase array antenna
AssigneeALCAN Systems GmbH
InventorsRolf Jakoby, Onur Hamza Karabey, Felix Goelden, Atsutaka Manabe
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Abstract
A two-dimensional (2-D) beam steerable phased array antenna is presented comprising a continuously electronically steerable material including a tunable material or a variable dielectric material, preferred a liquid crystal material. A compact antenna architecture including a patch antenna array, tunable phase shifters, a feed network and a bias network is proposed. Similar to the LC display, the proposed antenna is fabricated by using automated manufacturing techniques and therefore the fabrication costs are reduced considerably.
Claims18
A planar continuously steerable phased array antenna comprising:
- at least three substrate layers from top to bottom;
- a solid front dielectric substrate layer,
- an electronically variable dielectric layer, and
- a solid back dielectric substrate layer,
- wherein said electronically variable dielectric layer is in-between said front and back dielectric substrate layers;
- at least one phase shifter including electrodes mounted on a top of the back dielectric substrate layer;
- at least two radiating elements;
- a feeding network for providing the impedance matching between the radiating elements and a signal input port;
- and
- at least one biasing line that controls the electrical characteristics of the electronically variable dielectric layer and therefore the phase of the RF signal by applying a bias voltage,
- wherein the radiating elements are located on the top side of the front dielectric substrate layer,
- wherein the phase shifters having the electrodes are integrated into the antenna and are electronically tunable by utilizing the electronically variable dielectric layer, and whereby the electrodes of the phase shifters are planar transmission lines that feed the signal to the radiating elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.