Compact 1×2 and 2×2 Dual Polarized Series-Fed Antenna Array for X-Band Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar Applications

In this paper, compact linear dual polarized series-fed $1{\times}2$ linear and $2{\times}2$ planar arrays antennas for airborne SAR applications are proposed. The proposed antenna design consists of a square radiating patch that is placed on top of the substrate, a quarter wave transformer and $50-{\Omega}$ matched transformer. Matching between a radiating patch and the $50-{\Omega}$ microstrip line is accomplished through a direct coupled-feed technique with the help of an impedance inverter (${\lambda}/4$ impedance transformer) placed at both horizontal and vertical planes, in the case of the $2{\times}2$ planar array. The overall size for the prototype-1 and prototype-2 fabricated antennas are $1.9305{\times}0.9652{\times}0.05106{{\lambda}_0}^3$ and $1.9305{\times}1.9305{\times}0.05106{{\lambda}_0}^3$, respectively. The fabricated structure has been tested, and the experimental results are similar to the simulated ones. The CST MWS simulated and vector network analyzer measured reflection coefficient ($S_{11}$) results were compared, and they indicate that the proposed antenna prototype-1 yields the impedance bandwidth >140 MHz (9.56-9.72 GHz) defined by $S_{11}$<-10 dB with 1.43%, and $S_{21}$<-25 dB in the case of prototype-2 (9.58-9.74 GHz, $S_{11}$< -10 dB) >140 MHz for all the individual ports. The surface currents and the E- and H-field distributions were studied for a better understanding of the polarization mechanism. The measured results of the proposed dual polarized antenna were in accordance with the simulated analysis and showed good performance of the S-parameters and radiation patterns (co-pol and cross-pol), gain, efficiency, front-to-back ratio, half-power beam width) at the resonant frequency. With these features and its compact size, the proposed antenna will be suitable for X-band airborne synthetic aperture radar applications.