A wide-angle scanning conformal phased array antenna with narrow elevation beamwidth for UAV applications

This paper presents a conformal phased array antenna suitable for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) wings that features wide bandwidth, wide-angle scanning, and narrow elevation beamwidth. Unlike the traditional planar dipole elements with balun feeding, the proposed antenna element adopts a dipole pair with two-wire parallel feeding, thereby eliminating the need for a complex balun. To suppress impedance mismatch during large-angle scanning, two matching stubs are integrated into the ground plane, which effectively eliminates scanning blind spots. Additionally, by loading three directors, the elevation beamwidth at the center frequency is compressed to 69[Formula: see text] while the gain is improved, without degrading the active impedance bandwidth. Based on this element, a 1×12 linear wing-conformal array prototype is fabricated. Both simulated and measured results verify that the array realizes a relative bandwidth of 24.8% with no grating lobes even when scanned to ±65[Formula: see text] in the azimuth plane, and the gain fluctuation at the key frequency points is all less than 3 dB. These results validate the effectiveness of the design and highlight its potential for UAV radar applications.