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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Experimental Investigation of Wide-Angle Impedance

Matching of Phased Array Using Overlapped
Feeding Network
Run-Liang Xia, Shi-Wei Qu, Senior Member, IEEE, Xue Bai, Qi Jiang, Shiwen Yang, Senior Member, IEEE,
and Zai-Ping Nie, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractIn this letter, a microstrip phased array adopting

an overlapped feeding network in order to achieve wide-angle
impedance matching is proposed. A 1 16 phased array prototype
has been designed and fabricated for experimental verification.
Coupling coefficients and active element patterns for all the
radiating elements have been measured to calculate the active
reflection coefficients and to synthesize the array radiation patterns. Simulated and measured results show that the investigated
method is effective to improve the impedance matching over a
wide scan range compared to conventional impedance-matching
techniques. Due to the improved impedance matching especially
at large angles, the array can experimentally scan to
with
a gain decrease lower than 3 dB.
Index TermsPhased array, wide-angle impedance matching,
wide-angle scanning.

I. INTRODUCTION

HASED array antennas are of great interest because their

main beams can be steered to a desired angle by changing
the phase at each array element [1]. It is traditionally known that
the active reflection coefficient of each array element varies considerably with scan angle due to the mutual coupling. Therefore,
one of the most challenging aspects in phased array design is the
matching of the impedance on a wide angle. It is usually possible to match the array element only at boresight or a given scan
angle instead of over a wide scan range. The severe mismatch at
other angles can result in a sharp drop of the array realized gain.
Many researchers have published numerous reports on how
to achieve impedance matching of a phased array antenna
over a wide scan range. Magill and Wheeler [2] placed a
dielectric sheet in front of a waveguide array, called wide-angle
impedance matching (WAIM) layer, to remove some of the
susceptance variation as the array scans. However, in practice, the permittivity, thickness, and location of the dielectric
layer should be carefully chosen. Meanwhile, the additional
Manuscript received April 22, 2014; revised June 25, 2014; accepted June 29,
2014. Date of publication July 02, 2014; date of current version July 17, 2014.
This work was supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of China
(NSFC) Project under Grants 61101036 and 61371051. (Corresponding author:
Shi-Wei Qu.)
The authors are with the School of Electronic Engineering, University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu 611731, China
(e-mail: shiweiqu@uestc.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2334712

dielectric layer often introduces surface waves and increases

the weight and cost of the system. Instead of the traditional
dielectric sheet, using a metamaterial layer with anisotropic
properties to achieve wide-angle impedance matching was
reported in [3]. It can provide more degrees of freedom than
the traditional isotropic dielectric sheet. Unfortunately, no
experimental verification can be found therein. In [4], Tang and
Wong proposed a method based on multiple propagating modes
in the waveguide element. In their work, reflections of different
modes from the array aperture produce a cancellation effect at
the element driven terminal. However, this type of matching
technique is only possible for the array element supporting
multiple modes.
Another approach was proposed by Hannan et al. in [5],
where variation of the active input impedance of the array element was compensated by interconnecting adjacent elements
with reactance. Thereafter, an improvement was made using
-type reactive networks [6]. However, practically it is too
complicated to be implemented due to a noticeable loss in the
feeding network and consequently an array efficiency reduction. In 2012, Bhattacharyya studied scan performance of the
phased arrays with overlapped subarrays [7]. In his work, the
overlapped subarrays are realized by overlapping the two-way
power dividers in the feeding network. Consequently, the
feedlines of all array elements are actually connected to each
other. Therefore, it is similar to the connected circuits in [5] but
without lossy capacitors. Unfortunately, only numerical analysis was carried out therein, but the results show that this kind
of phased array has a potential wide-angle scanning capability.
An experimental investigation of this method is presented in
this letter and the measured results prove its validity.
II. ARRAY UNIT CELL DESIGN
In order to experimentally demonstrate this method, we consider an -plane linear microstrip array at around 7.5 GHz. The
unit cell and the feeding network are depicted in Fig. 1. The periodic boundary condition is established at the left and right sides
of the unit cell, using ANSYS HFSS, to predict the array scan
performance. In the unit cell with an area of 40.4 20 mm , the
patch element is etched on the upper substrate (called antenna
layer hereafter) with a relative permittivity of 2.2. The feeding
network in Fig. 1(b) is designed based on the ideal model proposed in [7]. The lower substrate (called feeding layer hereafter)
has an identical relative permittivity with the antenna layer. Two

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XIA et al.: WIDE-ANGLE IMPEDANCE MATCHING OF PHASED ARRAY USING OVERLAPPED FEEDING NETWORK

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TABLE I
REALIZED GAIN COMPARISON OF THE TWO KINDS OF PHASED ARRAY

Fig. 1. Array unit cell: (a) antenna layer; (b) feeding layer; (c) side view.

Fig. 2. Simulated active reflection coefficients of array unit cell under periodic
boundary condition.

simple two-way power dividers are adopted as the feeding network. The widths of the 50- and 100- microstriplines are 1.5
and 0.42 mm, respectively. The patch element is connected to
a microstrip feedline by a probe passing through a hole in the
aluminum ground.
In this design, the impedance matching is mainly dominated
by the two output arms of Power divider 1, i.e., the 100
microstrip lines in Sections 1 and 2, whose lengths are determined by and , respectively. As shown in Fig. 2, different
impedance-matching performances can be achieved by choosing
different combinations of and . To find suitable values for
and , a parameter sweeping has been carried out using HFSS.
The optimization goal is to make the active reflection coefficient
remain lower than 10 dB over a wide scan range (
).
Finally, the optimized values 7.98 and 4.58 mm for and
(the corresponding lengths of the output arms are 18.96 and
26.16 mm) can make the active reflection coefficient lower than
10 dB from boresight to
. For comparison, the results
obtained by using conventional feed technique (the array element is fed separately and matched well near boresight) are also
depicted by the black curve with down triangle symbols in Fig. 2,
which shows that the active reflection coefficient increases as
the array scans away from boresight.
A comparison of the realized gains between the conventional
and the overlapped feeding networks is given in Table I for
clarity. In the conventional case, the gain at 60 decreases by

3.19 dB relative to the peak gain at 10 . For the overlapped case,

the gain at 60 decreases by 2.05 dB relative to the peak gain
at 20 . However, the absolute gain improvement at 60 is not
significant (0.62 dB) compared to the conventional case. This
is because the active reflection in the conventional case is relatively small ( 7 dB as seen in Fig. 2) in this design.
The active reflection coefficients of the two cases are almost
equal when the array scans to 30 as given by the curve with
down triangle symbols and the curve with circle symbols in
Fig. 2. However, the realized gain difference between the two
cases is 0.3 dB, which implies the insertion loss of the overlapped feeding network is about 0.3 dB greater than that of the
conventional feeding network.
The impedance matching improvements at large angles are
primarily due to proper phase difference of the output currents
of the power divider according to [7]. From another viewpoint,
feedlines of all elements are connected because of the overlapped power dividers. Each element is assumed to be fed not
only by the nearest feed port, but also by the adjacent ports. The
coupled currents from the adjacent ports present different amplitudes and phases varying with scan angle compared to the
current from the nearest port. The reflection of the direct fed
current can be partially counteracted by the coupled currents so
that the impedance matching is improved.
III. 1

16 FINITE ARRAY EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Based on the design described Section II, a 1 16 array prototype has been fabricated for measurements as shown in Fig. 3.
and are 4.58 and 7.98 mm, respectively. The electromagnetic behaviors of array elements near the edge are quite different from those at the center. Therefore, another four dummy
elements terminated by matched loads are put at each end of the
array as shown in Fig. 3(b). They can provide a uniform neighboring environment for the elements near the array edge. The
finite array prototype has also been calculated for comparison
by full-wave simulation method.
A. Active Reflection Coefficients
The active reflection coefficient of any input port can be calculated in terms of scattering parameters and incident excitations [8]. In this design, the finite array is excited with a uniform
amplitude and linearly progressive phase to steer the main beam
to the desired angle.
As a representative example, the passive reflection coefficient
( ) of Port 9 and the coupling coefficients (
) have been
measured by using a network analyzer to calculate the active
reflection coefficient of Port 9. Fig. 4 displays the measured and

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 6. Simulated and measured active reflection coefficient at Port 9.

Fig. 3. Fabricated antenna prototype: (a) top view; (b) feeding layer.

Fig. 7. Simulated and measured active element pattern.

Fig. 4. Simulated and measured passive reflection coefficient

. It has been
measured by only exiting Port 9 and terminating the other 15 feed ports.

symbols in Fig. 5 represents the simulated

in the conventional feed case. Meanwhile, in traditional phased array designs,
the mutual coupling between elements usually needs to be suppressed. Comparatively, the mutual coupling is intentionally enhanced by the overlapped feeding network. Fig. 6 depicts the
active reflection coefficient versus scan angle. The measured results become worse near boresight, and the best matching scan
angle is shifted from
to
compared to the simulated
ones, due to the deterioration of the measured
. On the other
hand, the impedance matching is improved at large scan angles. For many applications, it is worth balancing the impedance
matching within the whole scan range to get the gain improvement at large scan angles because the gain is generally much
higher at boresight.
B. Active Element Patterns

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured coupling coefficients between Port 9 and the
other feed ports.

simulated
versus frequency. The measured
has a similar
variation trend to the simulated
. However, there exists a
0.1-GHz frequency offset between them that is mainly caused
by manufacturing and assembling errors.
Due to offset of the operating frequency, Fig. 5 shows simulated and measured amplitudes of the coupling coefficients
at 7.5 and 7.4 GHz, respectively. The curve with upper triangle

Since the mutual coupling effects have been taken into account, the active element pattern or scan element pattern can be
used to estimate the scanning characteristics of phased array antennas [8]. That of a given element in the array can be measured
in the anechoic chamber by exciting the corresponding feed port
and terminating the others by matched loads. Fig. 7 depicts the
measured and simulated results that have been obtained when
only Port 9 was excited. A good agreement can be seen between
the measured and simulated patterns. The ripples in the patterns
are caused by the mutual coupling and surface wave diffraction
at the edges of the array. Pattern ripples greater at negative angles for both simulated and measured results. It is caused by

XIA et al.: WIDE-ANGLE IMPEDANCE MATCHING OF PHASED ARRAY USING OVERLAPPED FEEDING NETWORK

1287

Fig. 9. Gain varies with different scan angles at different frequencies. Solid
lines: measured results. Dashed lines: simulated results.

Fig. 8. Finite array

and 60 .

-plane radiation pattern scanned to

, 30 , 48 ,

the asymmetric single-feed patch element rather than the overlapped feeding network.
C. Scanning Characteristics
The fully excited array patterns in -plane can be derived
from the 16 measured active element patterns [8]. Fig. 8 depicts
the array gain patterns when array scans to 0 ,
,
,
and
. The measured and simulated gain patterns are almost
the same at 0 and 48 . When the array scans to 30 and 60 ,
the measured gain decreases by 0.8 and 1.2 dB compared to the
simulated results. The gain decrease is partly due to the gain
fluctuation in the measured active element patterns, as shown in
Fig. 7. The manufacturing and assembling errors also contribute
to the gain decrease especially at large angles.
Fig. 9 depicts the realized gain varies as scan angle at different frequencies. The measured gain reduction is less than
3 dB when the array scans to 60 at these frequencies (about 2%
bandwidth), which shows that the investigated phased array has
a wide-angle scanning capability. Because of the asymmetric
active element patterns, the measured gain reduction is more
than 3 dB when the array scans to
at 7.35 and 7.5 GHz.
The narrow bandwidth in our design is concordance with Floquet analysis in [7]. However, it is not sufficient for some practical applications due to the inherent narrow bandwidth of overlapped feeding network. Yet, it can be improved to some extent by using bandwidth enhancement techniques for microstrip
antennas [9]. Further investigations may include improving the
bandwidth.

IV. CONCLUSION
A simple method for wide-angle impedance matching of a
microstrip phased array antenna has been experimentally investigated in this letter. By properly designing the arm lengths of
the overlapped power dividers, the impedance matching at large
scan angles can be improved significantly so that the array beam
can be scanned to large angles with less gain decrease. The mutual coupling between elements is intentionally enhanced and
turns out to be a positive impact on wide-angle scanning phased
array design. This method is very easy to be implemented and
may be applied in other antenna forms.
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[4] R. Tang and N. S. Wong, Multimode phased array element for wide
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