Design study of a low sidelobe microstrip antenna array and feed network

The authors present a novel design for a low-sidelobe microstrip antenna array and feed network at C-band (6 GHz). The array consists of 10 rectangular patch elements. A -30-dB sidelobe Chebyshev weighting function was used to produce a tapered aperture illumination. The implementation of the tapered weighting function was carried out by using branch-line couplers in the corporate feed. Experimental results show that a -25-dB sidelobe level was achieved in this design with an absolute gain of 18.2 dB, an efficiency of 80% and a cross polarization of -16 dB.<>