A LINEARLY-POLARIZED SLOTTED WAVE-GUIDE ARRAY USING REFLECTION-CANCELING SLOT PAIRS

Resonant slots are widely used for conventional slotted waveguide array. Reflection from each slot causes a standing wave in the waveguide and beam tilting technique is essential to suppress the reflection at the antenna input port. But the slot reflection narrows the overall frequency bandwidth and the design taking it into account is complicated. This paper proposes a reflection cancelling slot pair as an array element, which consists of two slots spaced by 1/4 lambda(g). Round trip path-length difference between them is 1/2 lambda(g) and reflection waves from a pair disappear and traveling-wave excitation in the waveguide is realized. The full wave analysis reveals that mutual coupling between paired slots is large and seriously reduces the radiation from a pair. Offset arrangement of slots in a pair is recommended to decrease the mutual coupling and to realize strong coupling. In practical array design, the mutual couplings from other pairs were simulated by imposing periodic boundary conditions above the aperture. To clarify the advantages of the slot pair over a conventional resonant slot, the predicted characteristics are compared. Reflection characteristics of the array using the slot pair is excellent and a boresite beam array can be realized. In addition, a slot pair can realize stronger coupling than the conventional resonant slot, while the bandwidth of the former in terms of the aperture field phase illumination is narrower than that of the latter. These suggests that the slot pair array is much more suitable for a small array than conventional one. Finally, the predicted characteristics are confirmed by experiments.