Dual Band Antenna Array for Concurrent Shared Aperture Operation

The paper presented herein introduces a novel method for the practical implementation of dual band antenna (DBA) arrays that are well-suited for simultaneous multifunction operation. The antenna elements operating at L-and C-band frequencies and sharing the same physical aperture allow for the antenna to serve multiple purposes. To achieve the desired radiation characteristics, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to determine the optimal inter-element spacings for L-band frequency elements and C-band frequency elements. Two non-uniformly spaced antenna (NUSA) arrays, one consisting of a
$\mathbf{1}\times \mathbf{8}$
-element linear array operating at L-band and the other a
$\mathbf{2}\times \mathbf{32}$
-element Planar array operating at C-band, have been interleaved into a common aperture, and their numerical, EM simulation, and experimental studies have been conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach for the development of a multi-functional antenna array.