Scan blindness free phased array design using PBG materials

Scan blindness occurs for phased arrays when propagation constants of Floquet modes (space harmonics) coincide with those of surface waves supported by the array structure. In this paper, we studied the possibility of using photonic band-gap (PBG) substrate to eliminate scan blindness. A specially designed printed PBG substrate can suppress surface wave propagation inside its bandgap range, therefore it can be used to eliminate scan blindness. In this paper, we presented a method of moments (MoM) analysis of the scan properties of dipole arrays on PBG substrates with ominidirectional bandgap(s). We found that scan blindness is completely eliminated. The elimination of scan blindness makes PBG materials very attractive in phased array design.