A W-band Circular Polarized Phased Array Antenna with ±40° Beam Scanning for Cubesat Application

This paper presents a W-band 8×16 right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) phased array antenna for Cubesat application. The resonant element consists of a radiating patch fed by a slot and the radiating patch is stacked on the slot, which is rotated to realize RHCP characteristic. The space between SIW feed lines is selected to be 1.65mm (0.52λ @94GHz). Simulated results show that the proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth (IBW) of 4 GHz (92 GHz-96 GHz) with reflection better than -10dB and Axial ratio bandwidth of 4 GHz (92 GHz-96 GHz) with the axial ratios (ARs) less than 3 dB, respectively. The radiation patterns show the cross-polarization ratio is better than 15.5 dB and RHCP gain is better than 25.8 dBi within the IBW. In the simulation of an 8×16 array, the phase shifter states are used to demonstrate beam steering of ±40° with RHCP gain better than 23.5 dBi.