SWAN™ - CAD Tool for the Design and Analysis of Large Beam Steering Slotted Waveguide Arrays

Flat profile and high performances in terms of efficiency and power handling make slotted waveguide arrays attractive for many applications, ranging from radar systems to satellite and terrestrial communication systems. Apertures with hundreds or thousands of radiating slots are needed to satisfy typical requirements on beamwidth and gain. The design and analysis of such large slotted waveguide arrays is therefore extremely burdensome, if carried out with commercial 3D full-wave software tools, because of the considerable computational effort required. SWAN™, a powerful CAD tool for the design and analysis of this kind of antennas, is presented in this paper. High computational efficiency, accuracy and reliability of the software are demonstrated by specific examples and by comparison between simulations and measurements.