$2\times2$ Phased Array Consisting of Square Loop Antennas for High Gain Wide Angle Scanning With Low Grating Lobes

A 2 × 2 array antenna comprised of conventional hybrid high impedance surface-based reconfigurable square loop antennas (SLAs) as elements is presented. The SLA element has four conducting arms and each arm is fed at the middle by vertical probes, which is connected to a 50 Ω port at the bottom of antenna ground plane. Thus, the SLA element has four feeding ports and it is capable of generating five distinct radiation patterns by using a combination of its feeding ports. Depending upon which of its four ports are excited it can provide four high gain off-boresight tilted beams (8.9 dBi at θ
_max
= 36°) in four different quadrants of the space (tilted beam mode). When all the four ports are simultaneously excited with phases of 0°, 0°, 180°, and 180°, it provides an axial beam (6.5 dBi) at boresight (axial beam mode). By combining these two modes the 2 × 2 array of SLAs can provide a scanning range of -60° to +60° in the elevation plane with high-gain beams (14-11.2 dBi).