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Description
Phased array antenna technology is most notably utilized in radar, satellite, and military communications. Although, in recent years the need for higher data rates has led to the development of 5G, which incorporates phased array antennas as a core piece of high-speed infrastructure. These applications require ease of deployability, beam agility, transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) capability, and signal integrity. This results in the need for highly integrated phased array antennas, i.e., a phased array with its aperture and respective beam forming architecture integrated into a single flat panel design. In this thesis, two integrated flat panel phased array antennas at X- and Ku-band will be explored which offers low-cross-polarization and grating lobe suppression capabilities, respectively. This first proposed design is a phased array antenna using the ADAR1000 chipset from Analog Devices. The single radiating element is a dual linear stacked patch antenna with 2.5 GHz of impedance matching bandwidth. The 8x8 stacked patch antenna is capable of at least ±30o scan angles for both polarizations enabling Tx/Rx capability. This array utilizes a mirrored cell of 4 antennas around a single chip. In turn, the mirrored configuration results in a cross-polarization of around 70 dB down from the co-polarization. Significantly reducing any noise that can be introduced by cross-polarized radiation. The fabricated array includes an integrated beam forming network and a suitable beam forming algorithm. The second design proposed in this thesis is a dual radiating modes (TM11 and TM21) based phased array antenna with 1λ inter-element spacing at Ku-band demonstrated using silicon beamforming RFICs and offers grating lobe suppression. The radiating element consists of concentric microstrip circular patch antennas supporting TM11 and TM21 modes. Excitation of both modes, with the proper amplitude and phase values, allows for the suppression of grating lobes present in the array radiation pattern. The array utilizes Anokiwave RFICs (AWMF-0117) which provides integration of the beamforming network with the antenna aperture. A suitable beamforming network was used to feed the RFICs. Grating lobe suppression ability of 30.8 dB with a first sidelobe level (SLL) of 15.2 dB is demonstrated along with digital modulation based over-the-air data throughput verification.
