A 10- to 21-GHz, low-cost, multifrequency, and full-duplex phased-array antenna system

This paper presents a novel phased-array antenna system with multifrequency, full-duplex operation, and wide-beam scanning. The system consists of a wideband power divider, a low-loss and low-cost multiline phase shifter controlled by dual piezoelectric transducers (PETS), a four-channel multiplexer, microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifiers, and a stripline-fed Vivaldi antenna array. The multiline PET phase shifter has a low perturbation loss of less than 2 dB and a total loss of less than 4 dB up to 40 GHz, with a maximum phase shift of 650/spl deg/. Using dual-aligned PETS for bidirectional phase shifting results in wide scan angles of 38.6/spl deg/, 37.6/spl deg/, 43/spl deg/, and 40/spl deg/ for the four channels at 10, 12, 19, and 21 GHz, respectively. The four-channel diplexer demonstrates low insertion loss with high isolation between channels. The new multifrequency phased-array system provides wide-beam scanning and full-duplex capability using a simple, low-cost architecture. The system can be used for applications in mobile satellite communications.