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IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
Volume 46 Number 4, April 1998

Table of Contents for this issue

Complete paper in PDF format

Blindness Removal in Arrays of Rectangular Waveguides Using Dielectrically Loaded Hard Walls

Sergei P. Skobelev, Member, IEEE, and Per-Simon Kildal, Fellow, IEEE

Page 546.

Abstract:

We analyze an infinite planar array of open-ended rectangular waveguides in which the E-plane walls are loaded with dielectric slabs in order to create a hard boundary condition. The analysis is done by using the mode-matching method with Floquet modes in the exterior region. The results show that the hard walls remove the blind spots otherwise present in the element patterns of wide-angle scanning arrays. This occurs both for rectangular and for triangular lattices. In addition, the array becomes better matched to free-space in a rectangular lattice. In limited-scan arrays of large square waveguides, the use of the hard walls increases the array gain by 0.9 dB, it reduces the grating lobe level in the H plane by 11 dB and considerably decreases the difference between the array characteristics in the E and H planes.

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