A SHAPED-BEAM SERIES-FED APERTURE-COUPLED STACKED PATCH ARRAY ANTENNA

A shaped-beam series-fed aperture-coupled stacked patch array antenna at X-band is presented. To improve the array bandwidth, two-port aperture-coupled stacked patch antennas, which are suitable for the series-fed array configuration, are presented as the radiating elements. To offer the pattern design and optimization progresses more flexibility, a uniformly spaced array configuration is applied in the shaped-beam pattern design, instead of the conventional nonuniformly spaced array configuration. The experimental results show that, in a 7.6% bandwidth, the main beam shape of the array maintains in good agreement with the design goal, and the side lobe level maintains lower than -18 dB.