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This paper presents the design, development, and measurement results of a low-cost integrated circularly polarized (CP) active phased-array antenna (CP-APAA) technology with sidelobe level (SLL) control, operating at $Ka$ -band, for high throughput land-mobile satellite communication. The proposed CP-APAA is comprised of ($4\times 16$) 64 elements in a rectangular grid array configuration. Eight commercial monolithic monolithic microwave/millimeter-wave integrated circuit. (MMICs) with eight-RF output channels have been used to control the phase and amplitude over the antenna aperture. For simplicity, the array antenna was designed in three metal layers and fabricated by a low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) technology as a proof-of-concept for a modular and scalable $Ka$ -band PAA with a wide steering angle. Measured radiation pattern shows a right-hand CP (RHCP) pattern with an axial-ratio (AR) level < 3 dB and low pointing error ≤1.5° over a scanning angular range of 0° to ±40°. Moreover, the amplitude excitation of the CP-APAA was tapered exponentially to control and reduce the SLL from 11 to 25 dB in boresight direction. Finally, toward a multibeam array implementation, two RHCP beams have been simultaneously generated at −30° and +20° scan angles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a low-profile, high-performance, and low-cost Ka-band circularly polarized (CP) passive phased-array antenna (PAA) system. A $1\times 4$ passive subarray operating at the Ka-band frequency band is investigated, developed, and tested as a possible building block for mobile satellite communication systems. In particular, a CP antenna integrated with a high-performance passive phase shifter is presented and experimentally verified. A new low-cost and low-profile magnetic actuator is proposed to precisely control the phase state of the phase shifter. A 3-D printed polymer package is utilized to enclose the phase shifter and reduce the environmental effects. The proposed CP passive PAA achieves high-performance right-hand CP radiation with high cross-polarization discrimination over a wide scan angle from 0° to ±38° over the frequency band (29.5–30.5 GHz). An axial ratio (AR) < 3 dB is demonstrated over the entire scanning range. Moreover, the measured radiation efficiency is 60% at boresight. The gain drops by 1 dB at ±38° scanning angles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]