Design of a C-band dual-polarized strip-FED aperture coupled stacked patch planar antenna array for point-to-point communication

Abstract

Point-to-point (P2P) communication is utilized where each communication node knows the physical or electrical positions of the other. In this type of communication, only two nodes transmit/receive message between each other and no other node is included in this process. P2P communication o ers some advantages such as lower power consumption, better information safety, lower vulnerablity to jamming and better channel capacity usage. With these properties, it is preferred frequently in military. Directional antennas with high gain and low side lobe level (SLL) are desired for P2P communication in order to achieve higher e ective communication distance, lower power consumption and to decrease the interference between channels, respectively. Another requirement is caused by Multiple-Input-Multiple- Output capability, which is a technique to use dual or circularly polarized transreceiver antennas instead of using separate transmitter and receiver antennas in the system. For dual-polarized MIMO antennas, high cross polarization isolation values are desired to separate the transmitting and receiving channels in order to prevent them e ecting each other. In this study, a C-band dual-polarized strip-fed aperture coupled stacked patch antenna array for P2P communication is designed. To satsify the requirements of P2P communication, the re ection coe cient of the designed antenna is -10dB. The gain is 20dB and SLL is better than -15dB in the cardinal and intercardinal planes of the antenna for both polarizations. Additionally, 40dB cross polarization isolation can be achieved. The idea is based on planar array of strip-fed dual-polarized aperture coupled patch antennas with stripline feed networks. By adjusting the amplitude distribution on the feed network, -15dB SLL in both cardinal and intercardinal planes is achieved for both polarizations. In order to block the coupling between feed networks for di erent polarizations and prevent distortion on amplitude and phase distributions, stripline feed networks are chosen. In this way, cross polarization isolation can be increased as well. Hence, a novel antenna element, dual-polarized strip-fed aperture coupled stacked patch antenna is proposed. The parameters that a ect the impedance behaviour of this type of antenna are investigated and examined in detail. Required feed networks to achieve -15dB SLL in cardinal and intercardinal planes are designed. The proposed antenna elements are placed in array sturucture, connected to feed networks and the resulted antenna array is optimized and analyzed.