A Bendable Wideband Dual-Polarization Conformal Phased-Array Antenna

In this letter, we proposed a bendable wideband dual-polarization low-profile conformal phased-array antenna. The antenna element is an inverted-F fed stacked-patch antenna. It provides an active VSWR $< $ 3 for 10.7–12.75 GHz in the principal planes. The proposed phased-array antenna employs a row modular architecture, which enables it to bend to a cylindrical geometry. Both the antenna aperture and the active components of the conformal phased-array antenna are considered for bending in this letter. A prototype conformal phased-array antenna with eight rows of four dual-polarization antenna element was fabricated, assembled, and measured. Wide-angle beam scanning is achieved by electronically scanning along the curved axis of the cylindrical conformal phased-array antenna. Moreover, there is no grating lobe when scanning down to 60°.