Design and Fabrication of X-band Broadband Array Antenna for SAR Applications

SAR를 위한 X-band 광대역 배열 안테나의 설계 및 제작

Synthetic Aperture Radars(SAR) are used mainly for high-resolution imaging of the terrain. This paper describes the 16$\times$16 array antenna designed for an X-band, automobile-based SAR(AutoSAR) system. This antenna has the structure of several layers such as radome, radiators, slots, feed network, and honeycomb cores. Each layer is adhesively bonded to meet different combination of structural and electrical design requirements. Using the Strip-Slot-Foam-Inverted-Patch(SSFIP) structure and dogbone slots, a wide bandwidth and a structural hardness were achieved. Measurement results were compared with simulation results. It was observed that the SAR antenna had a bandwidth of 1.7 GHz, side-lobe levels of less than -20 dB, half-power beamwidth of 5$^{\circ}$, and gains of 25.0 dBi. The observed results show that the designed array antenna is suitable for the broadband AutoSAR system.