New cavity backed capacitively coupled stacked patch element for P-Band SAR application

The Microwaves and Radar Institute at the German Aerospace Center operate an airborne multi-frequency, polarimetric, imaging SAR system. The F-SAR sensor is equipped with a variety of different antennas, based on patch technology. A new antenna element is developed for the P-Band frequency range from 400 to 470 MHz. Due to the requirements of the aircraft the size of the antenna array and therefore of each single element, is reduced to a minimum. A cavity backed, capacitively coupled stacked patch element is designed and presented in this paper.