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MECHANICALLY CONFORMAL AND ELECTRONICALLY RECONFIGURABLE APERTURES USING LOW VOLTAGE MEMS AND FLEXIBLE MEMBRANES FOR SPACE BASED RADAR APPLICATIONS

A new integrated wide band reconfigurable aperture array with associated wide band T/R functions on a flexible and foldable/rollable substrate for space based radar applications is proposed. Advanced MEMS and packaging techniques are used to make the antenna array light weight, mechanically and electrically reliable, and reproducible. Soft flexible substrates make the antenna foldable/rollable with the associated electronics on the opposite side of the substrate. The individually reconfigurable antenna element, which is suitable for inclusion in a large array, uses MEMS switches to select frequency bands of operation. These MEMS switches have low actuation voltages and stress-free operation, improving the reliability of individual array elements and the array as a whole. The reconfigurable antenna element is based on a low-profile conical radiator that provides greatly increased instantaneous bandwidth over microstrip patch antennas currently in place for phased array applications. Voltage-controlled MEMS switches are utilized so that the antenna element is capable of covering multiple bands, either contiguous or disparate, with each band having broad instantaneous bandwidth. Preliminary experiments have produced antenna elements with over 15% instantaneous bandwidth and 23% effective bandwidth achieved with one reconfiguration (3 switches). (The goal for contiguous effective bandwidth is 50%.) Design parameters under investigation include the element's shape, its position relative to the ground plane, the feed point design, and the number of sub-radiators included in the antenna as well as tuning element values and their positions on the antenna structure. The experimental results are backed up by computational data obtained using a novel low frequency, integral equation-based time domain solver.