A feasibility study of stripline-fed slots arranged as a planar array with circular grid and circular boundary

An experimental study of the self-impedance of stripline-fed slots has been undertaken, with slot length and slot offset relative to the strip as parameters. The slot is cut in one wall of a parallel plate waveguide, and locally a cylindrical cavity is created around the slot by two ρ=constant walls and two φ=constant walls. Such cavities can be used as modules to build a circular-grid planar array. Anticipating a corporate feed, it is demonstrated that sufficient dynamic range in the self-impedance to overcome the effects of mutual coupling is achievable, thereby opening up the prospect of an efficient circular-grid array for seeker antenna applications that require good sum and difference patterns