Cylindrical Phased Array with PIN-Diode Controlled Parallel-Plate Feeding System

A comparison of feeding systems for Cylindrical Phased Arrays presently known shows that most of them have the serious disadvantages of complexity and relatively high losses. This is due to the requirement of controlling not only the phase, but also the amplitude distribution over the array while scanning the antenna beam. The subject of this paper is the presentation of a new feeding system for Cylindrical Phased Arrays promising especially low losses. In principle, the feeding network consists of a center-fed parallelplate transmission device where the amplitude level at the outputs is controlled by means of PIN-diodes. This configuration offers a simple method for commutating the amplitude distribution when implemented in a Cylindrical Phased Array.