The VSWR is a measure of the amount of power reflected by the antenna. For example, a VSWR of 1.

5
means that about 4 percent of the transmitter power will be reflected by the antenna mismatching the
direction of the receiver, which corresponds to an isolation of only 14 dB. About 11 percent of the
power is reflected when the VSWR is 2.0, corresponding to less than 10 dB of isolation. Thus, a receiver
protector is almost always required. It also reduces to safe level radiations from nearby transmitters.

Introduction to phased array antennas:

The phased array is a directive antenna made up of individual radiating antennas, or elements, which
generate a radiation pattern whose shape and direction is determined by the relative phases and
amplitudes of the currents at the individual elements.
By properly varying the relative phases it is possible to steer the direction of the radiation.
The radiating elements might be dipoles, open-ended waveguides, slots cut in waveguide, or any other
type of antenna.
It has the flexibility of steering the beam by means of electronic control rather than by physical
movement of the antenna.
It has been considered in those radar applications where it is necessary to shift the beam rapidly from one
position in space to another, or where it is required to obtain information about many targets at a flexible,
rapid data rate.
Initially during World War 2 the radar with fixed phased-array antennas was used in which the beam
was scanned by mechanically actuated phase shifters.
A major advance in phased array technology was made in the early 1950s with the replacement of
mechanically actuated phase shifters by electronic phase shifters.
Frequency scanning in one angular coordinate was the first successful electronic scanning technique
to be applied.
The introduction of digitally switched phase shifters employing either ferrites or diodes in the early
1960s made a significant improvement in the practicality of phased arrays that could be electronically
steered in two orthogonal angular coordinates.

Basic concepts:
Two common geometrical forms of array antennas used in radar are the linear array and the
planar array. A linear array consists of elements arranged in a straight line in one dimension. A
planar array is a two dimensional configuration of elements arranged to lie in a plane. The
planar array may be thought of as a linear array of linear arrays.
The two-dimensional planar array is the most commonly used in radar applications since it is
fundamentally the most versatile of all radar antennas. A rectangular aperture can produce a
fan shaped beam. A square or a circular aperture produces a pencil beam. The array can be
made to simultaneously generate many search and/or tracking beams with the same aperture.
An array in which the relative phase shift between elements is controlled by electronic devices is
called an electronically scanned array. In an electronically scanned array the antenna elements,
the transmitters, the receivers, and the data-processing portions of the radar are often designed
as a unit.

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Radiation pattern:
Consider a linear array made up of N elements equaIIy spaced a distance d apart shown in Fig. 7.. The
elements are assumed to be isotropic point sources radiating uniformly in all directions with equal
amplitude and phase. Although isotropic elements are not realizable in practice, they are a useful
concept in array theory, especially for the computation of radiation patterns. The array is shown as a
receiving antenna for convenience, but because of the reciprocity principle, the results obtained apply
equally well to a transmitting antenna. The outputs of all the elements are summed via lines of equal
length to give a sum output voltage Ea. Element 1 will be taken as the reference signal with zero phase.
The difference in the phase of the signals in adjacent elements is Ψ = 2π (d/λ) sin θ, where θ is the
direction of the incoming radiation. It is further assumed that the amplitudes and phases of the signals
at each element are weighted uniformly. Therefore the amplitudes of the voltages in each element are
the same and, for convenience, will be taken to be unity. The sum of all the voltages from the individual
elements, when the phase difference between adjacent elements is Ψ, can be written as

….. (1)

where ω is the angular frequency of the signal. The sum can be written

….. (2)

Figure 7: N-element linear array.

The first factor is a sine wave of frequency ω with a phase shift (N - 1) ψ/2. The second term represents
the amplitude factor of the form sin (Nψ/2)/sin (ψ/2). The field intensity pattern is the magnitude of
the equation 2 , or

…. (3)

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The pattern has nulls when the numerator is zero.

For discrete aperture antennas (such as phased arrays) in which the element spacing is greater than a
half wavelength, the spatial aliasing effect causes some sidelobes to become substantially larger in
amplitude, and approaching the level of the main lobe; these are called grating lobes, and they are
identical, or nearly identical to the main beams.

The radiation pattern is equal to the normalized square of the amplitude, or

…….. [4]

When directive elements are used, the resultant array antenna radiation pattern is

…… [5]
where Ge(θ) is the radiation pattern of an individual element. The resultant radiation pattern is the
product of the element factor Ge(θ) and the array factor Ga(θ), the latter being the pattern of an array
composed of isotropic elements.

In a two-dimensional, rectangular planar array, the radiation pattern may sometimes be written as the
product of the radiation patterns in the two planes which contain the principal axes of the antenna. If
the radiation patterns in the two principal planes are G1(θe) and G2(θa) the two-dimensional antenna
pattern is

(6)

Thus, the normalized radiation pattern of a uniformly illuminated rectangular array is

(7)

Where N = number of radiating elements in θa dimension with spacing d and M the number in θe
dimension.

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Beam steering and beam width changes:
Beam steering:

The beam of an array antenna may be steered rapidly in space without physically moving large antennae
by properly varying the phase of the signals applied to each element. Consider an array of equally
spaced elements. The spacing between adjacent elements is d, and the signals at each element are
assumed to be of equal amplitude. If the same phase is applied to all elements, the relative phase
difference between adjacent elements is zero and the position of the main beam will be broadside to
the array at an angle θ = 0. The main beam will point in a direction other than broadside if the relative
phase difference between elements is other than zero. The direction of the main beam is at an angle θ0,
when the phase difference is Ø = 2π (d/λ) sin θ0. The phase at each element is therefore (Øc + m Ø)
where m = 0, 1,2. . . (N - I) and Øc is any constant phase applied to all elements. The normalized
radiation pattern of the array when the phase difference between adjacent elements is Ø is given by:

(8)

The maximum of the radiation pattern occurs when sin θ= sin θ0 .

Equation (8) states that the main beam of the antenna pattern may be positioned to an angle θ0 by the
insertion of the proper phase shift Ø at each element of the array. If variable, rather than fixed, phase
shifters are used, the beam may be steered as the relative phase between elements is changed (Fig.
8)below.

Figure 8: Steering of an antenna beam withvariable phase shifters (parallel-fed array).

Change of beamwidth with steering angle:

The half-power beamwidth in the plane of scan increases as the beam is scanned off the broadside
direction. The beamwidth is approximately inversely proportional to cos θ0, where θ0 is the angle
measured from the normal to the antenna.

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It is proved mathematically that the half-power beamwidth ѲB is given by :

ƟB = 0.886 λ /Nd cos Ɵ0 ….. [13]

Therefore, when the beam is positioned an angle θ0 off broadside, the beamwidth in the plane of scan
increases as (cos θ0)-1.

Figure 9: Beamwidth and eccentricity of the scanned beam.

The variation of the beam shape with scan angle is graphically shown in Fig.9 above.

Applications of the array in radar:

The phased array antenna has seen application in radar for a wide variety of purposes:
• Aircraft surveillance from on board ship
• Satellite surveillance
• Ballistic missile defense
• Air defense
• Aircraft landing systems
• Mortar and artillery location
• Tracking of ballistic missiles and Airborne bomber radar (EAR).
• Many developmental array radars have been developed and built in USA. Although much effort
and funds have been spent on this activity, except for limited-scan arrays there has not been
any large serial production of such radars compared to the serial production of radars with
mechanically rotating reflector antennas.

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Advantages and limitations:
Advantages:

Inertia less rapid beam steering: The beam from an array can be scanned, or switched from one
position to another, in a very short time limited only by the switching speed of the phase
shifters.Typically, the beam can be switched in several microseconds, but it can be considerably shorter
if desired.

Multiple, independent beams: A single aperture can generate many simultaneous independent beams.
Alternatively, the same effect can be obtained by rapidly switching a single beam through a sequence of
positions.

Potential for large peak and for average power: If necessary, each element of the array can be fedby a
separate high-power transmitter with the combining of the outputs made in "space" to obtain a total
power greater than that can be obtained from a single transmitter.

Control of the radiation pattern: A particular radiation pattern may be more readily obtained with the
array than with other microwave antennas since the amplitude and phase of each array element may be
individually controlled. Thus, radiation patterns with extremely low sidelobes or with a shaped main
beam may be achieved conveniently. Separate monopulse sum and difference patterns, each with its
own optimum shape, can also be generated.

Graceful degradation : The distributed nature of the array means that it can fail only gradually and not
at once (catastrophically).

Convenient aperture shape: The shape of the array permits flush mounting and it can be strengthened
to resist blast.

Electronic beam stabilization: The ability to steer the beam electronically can be used to stabilize the
beam direction when the radar is on an unstable platform, such as a ship or aircraft that is subject to
roll, pitch, and yaw disturbances.

Limitations:

Very rarely we may require a fast switching phased array antenna and for our application a simple
mechanically scanned antenna might be adequate in which case such a high cost electronically
steered antenna might not be necessary.
An N-element array can, in principle, generates N independent beams. However, in practice it is very
rarely required that a radar generate more than a few simultaneous beams (perhaps no more than a
dozen), since the complexity of the array radar increases with increasing number of beams.
Although the array has the potential for radiating large power, it is rare that an array is required to
radiate more power than that can be radiated by other antenna types or

260
that can be generated by current high-power microwave tube technology that feeds a single transmission
line.
Conventional microwave antennas cannot generate radiation patterns with side lobes as low as can
be obtained by an array antenna. However, when a planar array is electronically scanned, the
change of mutual coupling that accompanies a change in beam position makes the maintenance of
low side lobes more difficult.
The full testing of an array radar system is often more complicated than with conventional radar
systems.
The major limitation that has limited the wide spread use of the conventional phased array in radar
is its high cost, which is due to its complexity. The software for the computer system that is needed
to utilize the inherent flexibility of the array radar also contributes significantly to the system cost
and complexity.

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