Development of a Front End Array for Broadband Phased Array Receiver

Abstract

The receiver is a signal receiving device placed at the focus of the telescope. In order to improve the observation efficiency, the concept of phased array receiver has been proposed in recent years, which places a small phased array at the focal plane of the reflector, and flexible pattern and beam scanning functions can be achieved through a beamforming network. If combined with the element multiplexing, all beams within the entire field of view can be observed simultaneously to achieve continuous sky coverage. This article focuses on the front-end array of phased array receiver at 0.7-1.8 GHz for QiTai Telescope, and designs a Vivaldi antenna array of PCB structure with dual line polarization. Each polarization antenna is designed to arrange in a rectangle manner by 11 × 10. Based on the simulation results of the focal field, 32, 18 and 8 elements were selected to form one beam at 0.7, 1.25 and 1.8 GHz. A analog beamforming network was constructed, and the measured gains of axial beam under uniform weighting were 19.32, 13.72 and 15.22 dBi. Combining the beam scanning method of reflector antenna, the pattern test of different position element sets required for PAF beam scanning was carried out under independent array. The pattern optimization at 1.25 GHz was carried out by weighting method of conjugate field matching. Compared with uniform weighting, the gain, sidelobe level, and main beam direction under conjugate field matching have been improved. Although the above test and simulation results are slightly different, which is related to the passive array and laboratory testing condition, the relevant work has accumulated experience in the development of front-end array for phased array receiver, and has good guiding significance for future performance verification after the array is installed on the telescope.