Design procedure for planar slotted waveguide antenna arrays with controllable sidelobe level ratio for high power microwave applications

Abstract

This article presents a complete design procedure for planar slotted waveguide antennas (SWA). For a desired sidelobe level ratio (SLR), the proposed method provides a pencil shape pattern with a narrow half power beamwidth, which makes the proposed system suitable for high power microwave applications. The proposed planar SWA is composed of only two layers, and uses longitudinal coupling slots rather than the conventional inclined coupling slots. For a desired SLR, the slots excitation in the radiating and feeder SWAs are calculated based on a specified distribution. Simplified closed-form equations are then used to determine the slots nonuniform displacements, for both the radiating and feeder SWAs, without the need to use optimization algorithms. Using simplified equations, the slots lengths, widths, and their distribution along the length of the radiating and feeder SWAs can be found. The feeder dimensions and slots positions are deduced from the dimensions and total number of the radiating SWAs. An 8 × 8 planar SWA has been designed and tested to show the validity of the proposed method. The obtained measured and simulated results are in accordance with the design objectives. © 2020 The Authors. Engineering Reports published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.