Fabrication and measurement of a large, monolithic, PCB-based AESA

This paper discusses a fabrication approach and experimental validation of a very large, planar active electronically scanned array (AESA). The planar AESA architecture employs a monolithic printed circuit board (PCB) with 768 active antenna elements at X-Band. Manufacturing physically large arrays with high element counts is discussed in relation to construction, assembly and yield considerations. Measured active array patterns of the ESA are also presented.