Wing Conformal Load-Bearing Endfire Phased Array Antenna Skin Technology

In this article, a phased array antenna skin is proposed for conformally assembling scenarios and wide scanning applications. Planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) is used as a radiation element of the proposed array due to its low profile and omnidirectional radiation pattern. The PIFA element is conformally assembled in a wing of an aircraft and is designed and fabricated with the technology of composite material, which makes the PIFA element load bearing. The endfire beam synthesis is also investigated, and the proposed array supports wide-angle beam scanning in both forward and backward regions. An array of 240 PIFA elements are designed, simulated, fabricated, and experimentally tested. The fabricated sample is able to bear an overload of 1 g in the mechanical test, and all the electronic experiment results agree well with the simulation data.