Design of Coupled-Resonator Array Antenna for Steering Beam With Extremely High Scanning Rate

An extremely high scanning-rate beam-steering antenna based on coupled resonators is proposed in this communication. Coupling resonators in a controlled manner provides a sharp phase variation across a narrow frequency band, which contributes to the extremely high scanning rate. To steer the beam across broadside, alternating +90° and −90° impedance inverters are employed in the topology. Such a coupled-resonator array antenna is modeled and analyzed by coupling matrix technique, which was conventionally used in filter design. To illustrate the proposed technique, two examples with 50 and 100 MHz bandwidths are designed. Experimental validation is also provided for the 50 MHz bandwidth example, which demonstrates that the proposed antenna reaches a high relative scanning rate of
$52.8^{\circ }/\%BW$
with efficiency of 75%.