An Improved Architecture for Two-Element Biomimetic Antenna Arrays

A new architecture is presented for two-element biomimetic antenna arrays (BMAAs) that mimic the sense of directional hearing of the parasitoid fly Ormia Ochracea. The proposed architecture addresses a major practical shortcoming of the previously reported design in this area, namely the use of lossy transformers at high RF/microwave frequencies. The new topology does not employ any RF transformers and results in a substantially higher output power level for a given phase sensitivity, compared to the previously proposed design. Moreover, because the new design does not use any transformers, it is expected to be more amenable to operation at higher RF/microwave frequencies. A noise analysis is also conducted and the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the proposed design is theoretically compared with that of the previously reported design. It is shown that, for the same system level performance indicators, the proposed design demonstrates a higher SNR compared to the previous one. A prototype of a two-element biomimetic antenna array exploiting the proposed coupling network is designed, fabricated, and experimentally characterized.