Wideband 24–46 GHz Phased Array Antenna Enabled by a Compact Footprint Magnetoelectric Dipole With Frequency-Selective Stepped Patches

Abstract

A novel dual-polarized (DP) magnetoelectric (ME) dipole element, integrated with frequency-selective stepped patches, is introduced. These patches provide an additional lower-band electric dipole resonant mode to the conventional DP ME dipole element and dynamically adjust the element’s radiation aperture with frequency, similar to a frequency-independent antenna. This innovation achieves a wide impedance bandwidth (24–46 GHz, 62.8%) and stable radiation patterns across the entire band within a compact element footprint ( $0.23\lambda _{0} \times 0.23\lambda _{0}$ ), making the element suitable for wideband-phased array antenna (PAA) applications. A heterogeneous beam element (HBE) with an inclined beam is designed by asymmetrically loading a metasurface onto the proposed DP ME dipole. A novel $4\times 4$ DP PAA is developed based on the DP ME dipole element and the HBE, where the HBE compensates for aperture loss at large scanning angles within the higher-frequency band, ensuring scanning performance across the entire band. The proposed PAA achieves state-of-the-art operational bandwidth (24–46 GHz, 62.8%) and scanning capability ( $\ge \pm 40^{\circ }$ across the entire band).