The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 18, 1999
Filed:
Aug. 06, 1997
Ronald I Wolfson, Los Angeles, CA (US);
William W Milroy, Playa del Rey, CA (US);
Alan C Lemons, Hermosa Beach, CA (US);
Stuart B Coppedge, Manhattan Beach, CA (US);
Raytheon Company, Lexington, MA (US);
Abstract
A planar array antenna having a switching matrix that couples an RF signal to two distributed ferrite scanning line feeds that feed a planar continuous transverse stub array antenna. The scanning line feeds couple RF energy to the antenna from opposite sides to form a total of four beams offset in space that each cover different angular scan sectors. The antenna has reduced complexity and lower design and production costs. The use of dual ferrite scanning line feeds, the switching matrix, and the continuous transverse stub antenna to obtain wide-angle scanning provides significantly improved performance. The present invention uses the two distributed ferrite scanning line feeds to obtain greater scan coverage at upper millimeter-wave frequencies, where realizable ferrite materials are less active and provide diminished scan capability. The scanning line feeds and planar array antenna may be designed so that the four scan sectors are contiguous, to increase the angular scan coverage of the antenna. The switching matrix is used to sequentially feed each of four RF ports, which effectively produces a single beam that scans over the four contiguous scan sectors.