Design of Low-profile Lightweight Wide Scanning Antenna element for Phased Array Applications in L Band

In this paper, a low-profile lightweight wide scanning microstrip antenna is proposed, which can be widely used in space-borne and airborne platform. The results of simulation indicate that the antenna achieves 15% bandwidth while scanning to ±60° in E-plane and ±20° in H-plane, subject to active VSWR<; 2.5. The gain is within 3 dB of the theoretical limit in all scan-planes. Measured results are presented for a prototype 8× 4 array, showing good agreement with simulation.