Wide-Angle Scanning All-Metal Magnetoelectric Dipole Phased Array With Low Scanning Loss

In this letter, an all-metal 3-D-printed wide-angle scanning phased array (PA) with low scanning loss is proposed. An all-metal magnetoelectric (ME) dipole antenna is first designed, where the gap between the supporting walls operates as the magnetic current source, and the wedge-shaped dipole works as the electric current source. Consequently, the ME dipole antenna obtains a miniaturized footprint and broad beamwidth simultaneously. Furthermore, a 1 × 8 linear PA is developed. The element spacing is adjusted as 0.42λ
₀
(λ
₀
refers to a free-space wavelength at a center frequency) by interconnecting adjacent supporting walls and wedge-shaped dipoles to reduce the scanning loss of the array. A prototype is fabricated using selective laser melting printing technology. The measured results indicate that the proposed PA achieves a −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 23.7–26.4 GHz. A beam scanning ranging from −67° to +67° is obtained while the scanning loss and sidelobe level remain below 0.8 and −8 dB, respectively. Moreover, the all-metal structure ensures a radiation efficiency as high as 90%. Therefore, the proposed PA can be a promising candidate for millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) wireless systems.