Highly integrated transmitting and receiving phased array with multi‐channels and high efficiency in K/Ka‐band SatCom application

A highly integrated K/Ka‐band phased array with duplexing channels for transmitting and dual circularly polarized channels for receiving is presented. To increase both the efficiency and channel isolation, a novel architecture is proposed to integrate the horn antenna, polarizer, ortho‐mode transducer (OMT), and filters within a very compact radiating aperture as the element. Based on this element, one large‐scale phased array with 416 elements was developed, fabricated, and measured. Experimental results show that the proposed phased array has high aperture efficiency of larger than 56% in both transmitting and receiving channels, high channel isolations of 50 dB between different frequency channels and 20 dB between different polarization channels. Furthermore, beam scanning performance within ±20° and ±18° at 20 and 30 GHz are achieved, respectively. The developed multifunctional phased array is an attractive and feasible frontend for K‐/Ka‐ band SatCom system.