Design of serial feeds for a bifurcated beam of bend-array configuration

This paper presents the design of serial feed radiators in cylindrical lens antenna system for mobile base station application. The authors are developing a cylindrical lens antenna featuring a simple configuration compared to the present array antenna configuration. In order to achieve the cylindrical lens antenna, bifurcated beam radiation shall be produced by the feed elements. In this paper, the bifurcated beam is achieved by adopting a bend-array configuration, consisting of four rectangular array elements with serial feed network. To ensure good and balance performance of the array antenna, the orientation of electric fields and the excitation amplitude of each element are considered. The optimized array structure is then arranged in bended structure to obtain the bifurcated beam pattern. To verify the radiation characteristic, simulation result of the bifurcated beam radiation is shown in terms of the current distribution. Good agreement between the beam pattern and the current distribution is obtained, showing that the serial feed network is accurate and effective to produce the bifurcated beam radiation for cylindrical lens antenna system.