Design and Simulation of Conformal Phased Array Antenna

Abstract

Antenna is the main energy converter of radar seeker. It converts the transmitted signal into space radiation field, and converts the echo signal reflected by the target into guided wave field and sends it to the receiver. Therefore, antenna design plays an important role in the design of radar seeker. The development of radar seeker antenna mainly includes cone-scan antenna, monopulse parabolic antenna and waveguide slot array antenna. Although this kind of antenna can search and track the target, its scanning mode is mechanical scanning, which needs precise servo system to complete. Therefore, its angle scanning range is small, tracking speed is slow and volume is large. Phased array antenna has the advantages of fast beam scanning speed, flexible control and strong anti-jamming performance because it uses electronic scanning instead of mechanical scanning. At present, the phased array antenna is mainly planar array antenna. Its design technology is relatively mature, but there are some shortcomings. Its beam scanning range is narrow, beam width and sidelobe level will increase with the increase of scanning angle, and array gain will decrease with the increase of scanning angle. In order to fully satisfy the design requirements of the moving platform, the radiation units of the phased array antenna are installed on the surface of the moving platform to make it coincide with the surface of the moving platform. A conformal phased array antenna can be formed, where the moving platform can be a carrier of aircraft, missiles, ships and so on. Conformal phased array antenna is the combination of conformal array and phased array, so it can overcome the shortcomings of planar antenna, realize beam scanning with wide angle and wide range, and keep the antenna gain and beam shape unchanged during scanning. It can also improve the aerodynamic performance of carrier and reduce the cross-section area of radar. Therefore, conformal phased array antenna has become a new important development direction of radar antenna technology.