A high-gain and broadband printed array antenna consisting of seven hexagonal compound air-fed sub-arrays

A high-gain and broadband printed antenna together with its feed network is developed, which consists of seven hexagonal sub-arrays as cells, each one is a hexagonal compound air-fed array (CAFA), arranged in a beehive-like shape. After choosing an optimal feeding-voltage ratio of the central cell to the circumjacent cells as 0.42, the corresponding feed network is carefully designed. The measured results of a fabricated prototype are of common bandwidth (for VSWR ¿ 2.0:1 & gain-drop ¿ -3 dB & SLL ¿ -15 dB) 8.28% and maximal gain 22.51 dBi, while the simulation results are 9.63% and 22.87 dBi.