International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume3Issue6- 2012

Electronically Steerable planer Phased Array

Antenna
Amandeep Kaur
Department of Electronics and Communication Technology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India
Abstract- A planar phased-array antenna has been constructed
from a 15x15 square grid of z-directed monopoles with a length of
0.475 , element spacing of 0.29 , average directivity of 20.0 dBi
across all scan angles, an average H-plane HPBW of 37 degrees, an
average E-plane HPBW of 23 degrees, and an efficiency of 99.6%.
Two current distributions are tested: uniform and binomial. The
binomial current distribution is selected to minimize the side lobe
level.
Keywords- Phased array, Electronically steerable, Current
Distribution

I. INTRODUCTION
Phased array antenna is a multiple-antenna system in which the
radiation pattern can be reinforced in a particular direction and
suppressed in undesired directions. The direction of phased
array radiation can be electronically steered obviating the need
for any mechanical rotation. These unique capabilities have
found phased arrays a broad range of applications since the
advent of this technology. Phased arrays have been traditionally
used in military applications for several decades. Recent growth
in civilian radar-based sensors and communication systems has
drawn increasing interest in utilizing phased array technology
for commercial applications. Phased array antennas are common
in communications and radar and offer the benefit of far-field
beam shaping and steering for specific, agile operational
conditions. They are especially useful in modern adaptive radar
systems where there is a trend toward active phased arrays and
more advanced space time adaptive signal processing. In phased
arrays all the antenna elements are excited simultaneously and
the main beam of the array is steered by applying a progressive
phase shift across the array aperture.
II. PHASED ARRAY ARCHITECTURE
The phased array antenna has an aperture that is assembled from
a great many similar radiating elements, such as slots or dipoles,
each element being individually controlled in phase and
amplitude. Accurately predictable radiation patterns and beam
pointing directions can be achieved. A phased array is an array
antenna whose beam direction or radiation pattern is controlled
primarily by the relative phases of the excitation coefficients of
the radiating elements. Physically it is composed of a group of
individual elements that are arranged in a linear or two
dimensional (typically planar) spatial configurations.
A. Phased Array Principle
The block diagram of an N-element phased array is shown in

ISSN: 2231-5381

Fig. 1 N identical antennas are equally spaced by a distance

d along an axis. Separate variable time delays are incorporated
at each signal path to control the phases of the signals before
combining all the signals together at the output. A plane-wave
beam is assumed to be incident upon the antenna array at an
angle of to the normal direction. Because of the spacing
between the antennas, the beam will experience a time delay
equal to Eqn. 1 in reaching successive antennas.
=2 d sin()/
(1)
Here, is the wavelength of the signals. Hence, if the incident
beam is a sinusoid at frequency with amplitude of A, the
signals received by each of the antennas can be written as Eqn 2.
=A
(2)

Fig 1. Block Diagram of N-element Phased Array

The plane wave incident at an angle upon the phased array

experiences a linear delay progression at the successive antenna
elements. Therefore, the variable delay circuits must be set to a
similar but with reverse delay progression to compensate for the
delay of the signal arrived at the antenna elements. In linear
arrays, variable time delays are designed to provide uniform
phase progression across the array. Therefore, the signal in each
channel at the output of the variable delay block can be written
as Eqn. 3.

=A
(3)
In this equation, denotes the difference in phase shift provided
by two successive variable time delay blocks. Therefore, array
factor which is equal to the sum of all the signals normalized to
the signal at one path can be written as Eqn. 4.
(
)
F=
(4)
According to Eqn. 1.4, the peak of the array factor occurs at an
incident angle which can be determined by Eqn. 5.

http://www.internationaljournalssrg.org

Page 708

International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume3Issue6- 2012

III. ANALYSIS
2 d sin()/ = Or =arcsin( )
(5)
At this incident angle, which is called scan angle, the linear
delay progression experienced by the wave arriving at the
successive antennas is perfectly compensated with the time
delays incorporated at each path resulting in all the signals being
coherently combined at the output of the receive array. The
array factor can also be shown as Eqn.6.
F=

( )

[
[

( )

(6)

At the scan angle , the array factor has a maximum value of

. For other angles of incident, the array factor will be lower
than this value indicating spatial selectivity of phased array. In
addition to the spatial filtering, one of the main capabilities of
phased array is that the peak gain of the array, according to Eqn.
5, can be controlled by electronically tuning the variable time
delays eliminating the need for any mechanical rotation of
antenna array.
It should be also noted that the benefits of using phased array is
increased as the number of elements in the phased array is
increased. As mentioned before, the maximum value of array
factor
is directly proportional to the number of array
elements. Furthermore, the beam width of the array can be
decreased by increasing the number of array elements in order to
enhance the spatial selectivity of phased array.
B. Classification of Phased Arrays
(1) Scanning methods.
(2) Radiator
(3) Positioning of radiators in the array.

feed

methods.

The main scanning methods are phase scanning and frequency

scanning. It is the phase scanned arrays that are referred to as
phased arrays. From the viewpoint of feed methods, arrays are
divided into constrained feed arrays and space fed arrays, the
latter taking the form of reflect arrays or transmission arrays.
With regard to element positioning, phased arrays are divided
into uniformly spaced and unequally spaced arrays. They
provide the radar with flexibility and adaptation to the assigned
task, ability to change beam position in space almost
instantaneously (electronic scanning), generation of very high
powers from many sources distributed across the aperture, high
directivity and power gain possibility of synthesizing any
desired radiation pattern (including formation of pattern nulls in
the directions of undesired interference sources) capability of
combining search, track, and recognition functions when
operating in multiple target and severe interference
environments (including jamming), enhanced target throughput
capability, and compatibility with digital computers and digital
signal processing algorithms.

ISSN: 2231-5381

This antenna design attempts to find the optimal combination of

several properties: element distribution, element type, element
spacing, efficiency, current distribution, and phase requirements.
A MATLAB simulation is also created to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the design.
A. Element Arrangement, 2Dimensional Square Array
Element arrangement is the first factor we consider in this
design. An array factor expression that meets the directive angle
requirements is required. Therefore, we consider an arrangement
of concentric circles, a 2dimentional rectangular planar array,
and a 3dimentional placement of dipoles as possible element
arrangements. We were not able to consider the concentric
circles or 3dimensional arrangement because the required
mathematical analysis involved is lengthy and our design time is
limited. In addition, 3 dimensional arrays add extra mechanical
complexity to the design, and a goal of this project is to trade
mechanical complexity for electrical complexity. Therefore,
only the 2dimensional square array is considered. Two
dimensional rectangular arrays are much easier to analyze.
Although we expect to lose some degree of accuracy
azimuthally, a rectangular array seemed like an effective
tradeoff between design complexity and performance.
B. Element Spacing
In general, increasing element spacing allows for finer beam
widths, but element spacing greater than halfwavelength results
in undesired grating lobes. These grating lobes are shown for a
separation of 0.8 wavelengths along the x and yaxis elements:
We chose a uniform element spacing of 0.29 wavelengths such
that the beam width is moderately fine, does not produce grating
lobes, and allows sufficient number of elements to fit on the
circular mounting structure. This element spacing determines
the total number of array elements due to restrictions in the
maximum allowable array area. Since the maximum length of
the square array is 0.707 the allowable diameter (50 inches), the
number of elements allowed with a 0.29 wavelength element
separation equals the following:
N or M max= (50 feet*12
*2.54 )/(0.29 240
)
N or M max=15.48 = 15
C. Element Type
ZDirected monopoles were chosen over patch antennas for
improved efficiency. The monopoles are zdirected to exploit
the blind spot in the =0 direction, which falls outside of the
design requirements (minimum =10 ).
A halfwave dipole is used in the simulation because this
represents a realistic length, when compared to the ideal and
short dipoles at 125MHz, and because larger structures are more

http://www.internationaljournalssrg.org

Page 709

International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume3Issue6- 2012

resistant to changes in characteristics produced by rust and
chemical erosion. In addition, the input impedance of such a
dipole can be made real (70) by shortening the dipole slightly
to achieve resonance. Since our array consists of erect
monopoles positioned directly normal to a PEC ground plane,
the length of our array elements are only a quarterwavelength
(60cm). The actual length is slightly less than 60cm to achieve
resonance when considering the extra effective length due to
fringe field effects. The input impedance is half of that for the
equivalent dipole, or 35. The expected directivity is twice that
for a halfwave dipole in free space or 5.16dB.

HPBW_E_MAX:34.153

: HPBW_H_MAX:11.5014

HPBW_E_AVG:19.9463

D. Current Distribution
In order to achieve the lowest side lobe levels (SLL) possible,
we decided to use a binomial array amplitude distribution,
which completely eliminates the side lobes. This has the effect
of decreasing directivity and halfpower angle in the E and
Hplanes. The uniform pattern produces unacceptable SLL when
the beam is positioned 10 degrees from the zaxis. The uniform
and binomial distributions are shown in figure 2 and figure 3
below.

: HPBW_H_AVG:10.1628

Fig 2. Uniform Distribution

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

We simulate the following change in variables for our
rectangular array design:
1. Rectangular Array of size N x M
2. Arbitrary Element Spacing
and
3. Uniform or Binomial current distribution
4. 0.5 Dipoles or Isotropic Sources to simulate a pure
Array Factor
5. phase distance &
or beam direction
&
MATLAB Simulation displays the following data:
1. Normalized 3d meshgrid plot of the Total Radiated
Pattern
2. HPBWE (Present State, Max, and Simulation
Average)
3. HPBWH(Present State, Max, and Simulation Average)
4. Directivity (Assuming Dipole, Present State, Min, and
Simulation Average.
Given: N = M = 15,

Fig 3. Binomial Distribution

A. Uniform Distribution in Planer Phased array antenna at

different angles

= .29,

Binomial Current Distribution

HPBW_E_MAX:56.1728 : HPBW_H_MAX:27.6654

: D_MIN:58.6124

HPBW_E_AVG:37.0722 : HPBW_H_AVG:23.7516

: D_AVG:101.6584

Since the beamwidths were so high we decided to see what kind

of beamwidths we could have expected with uniform current
distribution, despite its large sidelobes.
Uniform Current Distribution

ISSN: 2231-5381

http://www.internationaljournalssrg.org

Page 710

International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume3Issue6- 2012

Fig 4. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 0

Fig 7. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 180

Fig 5. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 90

Fig 8. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 270

Fig 6. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 120

Fig 9. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 360

ISSN: 2231-5381

http://www.internationaljournalssrg.org

Page 711

International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume3Issue6- 2012

B. Binomial Distribution in Planer Phased array antenna at
different angles

Fig10. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 0

Fig 11. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 90

Fig 12. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 120

Fig 13 Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 180

Figure 14. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 270

Figure 15. Antenna Pattern (0) :10 ,(0): 360

ISSN: 2231-5381

http://www.internationaljournalssrg.org

Page 712

International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology- Volume3Issue6- 2012

CONCLUSION
Phased array, capable of providing a directional beam that can
be electronically steered, can significantly enhance the
performance of sensors and communications systems. The
directional beam of a phased array also allows for a more
efficient power management. In addition, the spatial filtering
nature of the phased array systems alleviate the problem of
multipath fading and co-channel interference by suppressing
signals emanating from undesirable directions. Unfortunately,
side lobe levels on the uniform distribution are above the 20dBi
requirement. The uniform distribution experiences significantly
reduced beam width than the binomial distribution; however,
directivity for each case exceeds the specified requirement (20
dBi). By using Dolph Chebyshev current distribution we can
reduces HPBW while maintaining 20dBi sidelobes relative to
the main beam.

[1]

Danial Ehyaie, Novel Approaches to the Design of Phased Array

Antennas,
Doctor
of Philosophy(Electrical
Engineering)
thesis,University of Michigan,2011

[2]

Kyle Howen , Andrew

antenna,unpublished.

[3]

R. J. Mailloux and I. Books, Phased array antenna handbook: Artech

House,2005.

[4]

R. J. Mailloux, "Electronically scanned arrays," Synthesis Lectures

on Antennas, vol. 2, pp. 1-82, 2007.

Huard,Design of Planer Phased

array

REFERENCES

ISSN: 2231-5381

http://www.internationaljournalssrg.org

Page 713