A Singly Curved Conformal Phased Array with Integrated Particles-Based CRLH Phase Shifters
Muhammad Ayaz and Irfan Ullah
In this paper, a four unit cell micron-sized magnetic
particles embedded composite right/left-handed (CRLH) trans-
mission line metamaterial phase shifter is proposed. The vari-
able phases are achieved by activating the micron-sized magnetic
particles along the length of stub transmission lines of the CRLH
transmission line structure. This causes to effectively change the
inductance of stub transmission lines, which changes the phase of
the RF signal. These structures can be activated in a symmetric
or asymmetrical manner to obtain wide range of phase shifts. A
prototype of cascaded four unit cell CRLH transmission line phase
shifter with embedded silver-coated ferrites (magnetic particles)
is designed, fabricated and tested for phase shifters applications.
The measured phase response of the proposed phase shifter is in
close agreement with the simulated phase response. Next, for the
performance analysis of proposed phase shifter, a 1 × 4 conformal
curved-shaped phased array operating at 5.8 GHz is fed with the
four unit cell cascaded phase shifter in CST full-wave simulator.
The conformal phased array with proposed integrated phase shift-
ers was simulated for broadside pattern correction and main beam
scanning at 20 degree on curved-shaped surface with different
bend angles. The radiation pattern results obtained with the pro-
posed integrated phase shifters are in close agreement with those
obtained with direct excitation of the array.