Thinned printed technology phased array enhanced with Frequency Selective Surfaces for space applications

In this contribution we show how Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSS) superlayers can be used to improve the performances of the phased array antennas with large periodicities by achieving an angular filtering at the array element pattern level. We show the design of thinned 7×7 phased array in printed technology integrated with an inductive FSS. The array elements are dipole coupled slots placed at a distance of 2λ₀ of each other. As a reference benchmark we compare the performances of the 7×7 FSS based phased array with a 7×7 phased array composed of 2×2 sub-arrays. We show that an increase in the gain of more than 2.5dB is obtained in the FSS array with respect to the benchmark.