A fully-integrated Vivaldi phased array for seeker applications

In missile seeker applications, it is desirable to have an antenna with sufficient gain and bandwidth whose main beam can be electronically steered during flight. Due to the limited space on board a missile, however, the antenna array and associated electronics are not allocated much space and must therefore be integrated if it is to be a viable solution. A class of tapered slot antenna having an exponential taper is generally referred to as a Vivaldi antenna. The design and results for a fully-integrated, 8-element phased array using Vivaldi radiating elements are presented. The Vivaldi antenna consists of a tapered slot in a single metallized layer on top of a dielectric substrate. Our work validates and demonstrates the performance of the Vivaldi array in a fully integrated phased-array design.