Article
Coherently Radiating Periodic Structures to Reduce the
Number of Phase Shifters in a 2-D Phased Array
Elizvan Juárez
1
, Marco A. Panduro
1,
* , David H. Covarrubias
1
and Alberto Reyna
2
Citation: Juárez, E.; Panduro, M.A.;
Covarrubias, D.H.; Reyna, A.
Coherently Radiating Periodic
Structures to Reduce the Number of
Phase Shifters in a 2-D Phased Array.
Sensors 2021, 21, 6592. https://
doi.org/10.3390/s21196592
Academic Editor: Ángela María
Coves Soler
Received: 24 August 2021
Accepted: 28 September 2021
Published: 2 October 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
1
CICESE Research Center, Electronics and Telecommunications Department, Carretera Ensenada-Tijuana
No. 3918, Zona Playitas, Ensenada 22860, Mexico; elizvan@cicese.edu.mx (E.J.); dacoro@cicese.mx (D.H.C.)
2
UAMRR-R, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Carretera Reynosa-San Fernando, Reynosa 88779,
Mexico; alberto.reyna@docentes.uat.edu.mx
* Correspondence: mpanduro@cicese.mx
Abstract:
This paper illustrates the application of CORPS (coherently radiating periodic structures)
for feeding 2-D phased arrays with a reduced number of phase shifter (PS) devices. Three design
configurations using CORPS are proposed for 2-D phased arrays. The design model of phased array
for these configurations considers the cophasal excitation required for this structure to set a strategic
way for feeding the antenna elements and reducing the number of PS devices. Blocks of 2
×
3 and
4 × 7 CORPS
networks depending on the configuration in the 2-D phased array are set strategically
in the feeding network to generate the cophasal excitation required in the antenna elements. These
design configurations used for feeding the antenna elements in the planar array geometry provide
several advantages with respect to others in the scanning capability and the reduction of the number
of PS devices of the array system. The full-wave simulation results for the proposed configurations
in 2-D phased arrays provide a reduction in the number of PSs of until 69% for a scanning range of
±
25
◦
in elevation and
±
40
◦
in azimuth. The application of the raised cosine amplitude distribution
could generate radiation patterns with a SLL_PEAK
≈ −
19 dB and SLL_PEAK
≈ −
23 dB for the
design proposed configurations in all the scanning range.
Keywords:
2-D phased array; coherently radiating periodic structures; phase shifter; side lobe level;
beam-scanning
1. Introduction
Antenna arrays are a very important element of wireless communication systems.
Many of new generation systems will be based on different antenna arrays structures [
1
].
Therefore, it is important to generate new design techniques for reducing the complexity
and the cost of the antenna array system maintaining an optimal radiation performance.
The state of art includes two recent techniques for simplifying the number of phase
shifters (PS): the subarrays technology [
1
–
8
] and the CORPS technology (coherently radi-
ating periodic structures) [
9
,
10
]. The subarrays technology considers randomly grouped
subarrays in linear and planar arrays for a reduced number of PS. This technique reduces
the number of PS devices for limited scan-angle phased arrays [
1
,
11
]. Furthermore, the
CORPS technique has been applied successfully in several previous studies for simplifying
the beamforming network in different antenna array geometries [
9
,
10
,
12
,
13
]. Although
these previous works deal with the application of CORPS for different antenna array
geometries, the evaluation and proposal of new design techniques for reducing the PS
devices are still scarce. The design technique presented in [
10
] illustrated the reduction
of PS devices for linear phased arrays using CORPS. However, more study and analysis
is required to generate new and more design configurations with different antenna array
geometries to simplify the beamforming network by reducing the number of PS with a wide
range of beam-scanning and low SLL. These new design techniques and configurations of
phased array systems could be useful for the new generation of communication systems.
Sensors 2021, 21, 6592. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21196592 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
