Parameter study and design of wide-band widescan dual-polarized tapered slot antenna arrays

A parameter study of dual-polarized tapered slot antenna (TSA) arrays shows the key features that affect the wide-band and widescan performance of these arrays. The overall performance can be optimized by judiciously choosing a combination of parameters. In particular, it is found that smaller circular slot cavities terminating the bilateral slotline improve the performance near the low end of the operating band, especially when scanning in the H-plane. The opening rate of the tapered slotline mainly determines the mid-band performance and it is possible to choose an opening rate to obtain balanced overall performance in the mid-band. A longer tapered slotline is shown to increase the bandwidth, especially in the lower end of the operating band. Finally, it is shown that the H-plane anomalies are affected by the array element spacing. A design example demonstrates that the results from the parameter study can be used to design a dual-polarized TSA array with about 4.5:1 bandwidth for a scan volume of not less than /spl theta/=45/spl deg/ from broadside in all planes.