Peripherally Excited Phased Arrays with Practical Active Huygens’ Sources and Slot Elements

Antenna phased arrays have become increasingly important in recent years with the advent of technologies such as 5G communications, automotive radars, and satellite internet. These phased arrays are costly to design, fabricate and deploy. A main component of the cost of traditional phased arrays is that of the necessary feeding network and phase shifters or transceivers. A recently developed concept called the peripherally-excited (PEX) phased array has been proposed which is capable of generating electronically scanned pencil beams with a reduced number of phase shifters. The concept of the PEX phased array relies on peripheral active Huygens’ sources that are used solely along the periphery of the cavity. This paper proposes a practical Huygens’ source implementation which is compatible with printed-circuit-board technology, and exhibits acceptable reflections and mutual coupling between adjacent sources. Furthermore, a specially-engineered slot arrangement is proposed which can achieve effective radiation at broadside and tilted angles.