Low cost beam steered arrays for mobile communications

This paper discusses the development of a low cost beam steering array from the mathematical analysis through to the testing of the first prototype. A mathematical analysis program was developed for calculation of phase steered antenna array behaviour based on antenna array equations. Simulated results from this program show that a very large antenna array would be required to create relatively small beamwidths, so an innovative method of engineering the overlap between two individually steerable beams to be the effective beamwidth of the system has been devised so that the number of elements in the array can be minimised. Promising simulation results lead to the development of the components needed to realise a prototype array including microstrip patch antennas and low cost phase shifters. Discussion of the design of these components are presented as well as overall test results.