Recent developments in the design of conformal microstrip phased arrays

The described work represents an attempt to use the potential of low fabrication costs and ease of installation, which are characteristics of microstrip, to develop phased array components and prototype arrays which meet the gain requirements and other antenna design goals. A conformal microstrip phased array antenna has previously been installed on a test aircraft and was successfully operated during the 1974-1975 ATS-6 test program. Reported work on the microstrip radiating element has been concentrated in two specific problem areas, beamwidth and bandwidth. Other developments considered are related to the array configuration and the control circuitry. Array breadboards have been built in order to experiment with promising configurations.