Wideband fractal printed element phased array antenna

We present a novel wideband microstrip antenna element with a fractal geometry used in a phased array. A cavity built around the element is used to reduce the cross-polarisation level of the element and the inter-element mutual coupling. A prototype array of 9/spl times/9 elements has been built and tested to prove the concept. The agreement obtained between the computed and the experimental results was good. The simulations were performed with the Microwave Studio (MWS) commercial software from Computer Simulation Technology (CST), which is based on the method of finite integral time domain (FITD) algorithm.