Design of wide-band dual–polarized aperture array antennas

This paper describes the design of high-performance compact aperture array antennas for radio astronomy and other applications. Three recent antenna developments for square kilometer array design study (SKADS) have been investigated and the performances are compared. In addition to the radio frequency (RF) performance, an essential requirement for the square kilometer array application is the cost per square area. Based on initial large–scale finite array studies, prototypes with different geometries have been fabricated and measured. Guidelines are derived for large–scale wide–band dual-polarized array designs in applications where low cross-polarization and a wide range of scan angles are required.