Practical Design of an Octave-band Stacked Patch Antenna Phased Array

MIT Lincoln Laboratory is developing a planar ultra-wideband phased array antenna. The radiator is required to operate over an octave of bandwidth and provide up to 55° of scanning in elevation and azimuth with dual polarization capability. Although these requirements are easily met using state of the art designs such as a PUMA or Vivaldi array, the design requires co-located phase centers for the unit cell. A detailed description of the probe-fed stacked patch radiator design will be reviewed and results discussed. Measurements will be presented for the prototype that was fabricated.