Ka-band microstrip array based on mutual coupling

Abstract

The paper mainly contains the following several parts: Firstly, the development of antenna arrays is described. The techniques for reducing the cost of the array in the past several decades are revealed. Secondly, the basic theory and the principle of the patch antenna array are introduced. The theory of array is proposed in this paper, which makes use of the mutual coupling between the elements. Thirdly, to demonstrate the proposed idea, several microstrip patch antenna arrays are designed, e.g. E plane sparse microstrip arrays, H plane sparse microstrip array and 2-D spares array. Finally, a conclusion can be proved that we can reduce the number of active elements by using mutual coupling in order to decrease the cost of array, which has an approximately equal aperture efficiency.