A 512-Element K-Band Receive Phased Array with Dual-Circularly-Polarization for SATCOM Application

This paper presents the design of a low profile K-band 512-element receive dual-circularly-polarized planar phased array. The stacked patch antenna is adopted to offer a wide frequency band and arranged by the
$32\times 16$
rectangular grid. To reduce the hardware cost, the commercial silicon-based beamformer chip is utilized and mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB) with the patch antenna array integrated as a whole. In this design, there are 128 beamformer chips, a power combiner network, one beam control and power supply unit. The stacked-patch antenna with 3-dB coupler feed network can be operated both left- and right-hand circular polarization. This antenna system has the advantages of low profile, light weight, high integration and flexible extensibility. It is a reasonable solution for LEO satcom application.