Wideband Monostatic Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STAR) Antenna

A monostatic ultra-wideband simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) antenna subsystem is introduced. An inherent geometrical symmetry of a four-arm spiral antenna and feeding rearrangement are exploited to achieve the simultaneous transmit (TX) and receive (RX) functionalities without any time, polarization, or frequency multiplexing. The antenna is configured such that one arm-pair is used for TX and the other for RX. Thus, even though the two antennas are spatially separated by 90 degrees, they still share the same aperture and the system is considered monostatic. Theoretical and computational studies are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach under ideal conditions as well as in the presence of feed network non-idealities. The experimental data indicate that isolation levels greater than 39.6-50 dB over multiple octaves are achievable with realistic components. To improve the TX and RX far-field patterns, the planar four-arm spiral aperture is grounded via resistor-loaded quadrifilar helix with the two-arm TX/two-arm RX feed arrangement preserved. Furthermore, to simplify the feed network and reduce the impact of hybrid imbalances, an impedance-transforming microstrip feed is integrated with each arm pair. Isolation > 37 dB and similar with high-quality measured and simulated TX/RX radiation patterns are obtained over the operating bandwidth.