A broad beam-width microstrip cross antenna design for wide scan angle phased array

A wide bandwidth, broad beam-width microstrip antenna element is reported for active phased array application. The antenna element offers a return loss better than -10dB over a bandwidth of 24.82% in Ku-band with beam-widths of 134° in H-plane and 126° in E-plane, respectively. The antenna is capable of realizing two orthogonal linear polarizations and a circular polarization respectively when different feeding approaches are utilized. Moreover, the wide-angle scanning characteristic of the 8×8 array composed of proposed element is evaluated. Besides, the microstrip steerable antenna array can be easily embedded into wearable medical or commercial devices.