Designs and experiments of a novel compact E-shaped wideband planar antenna array for high-power microwave application.

A novel compact E-shaped wideband planar antenna array (CEWPA) is designed and fabricated for high-power microwave (HPM) application. The CEWPA is a kind of planar antenna and it has a lot of advantages such as low profile, wideband, high efficiency, easy to manufacture, and light weight. Compared with traditional planar antenna arrays, it overcomes the disadvantage of low power capacity through special metal structure designs. The CEWPA consists of 60 antenna elements and achieved miniaturization by an innovative array layout. In addition, it has reached a relative bandwidth of 33% (VSWR < 2) at a center frequency of 2.1 GHz in simulation and over 20% in experiment. On the other hand, the measured gain at the cold test is greater than 20 dB in the whole bandwidth while the radiation patterns are in agreement with the simulation. In addition, excited by nanosecond level pulses, the power capacity of the whole system is more than 140 MW in a high-power test.