Cassegrain monopulse antenna based on planar array structure
Technical Field
The invention belongs to the technical field of antennas, and particularly relates to a cassegrain monopulse antenna based on a planar array structure.
Background
Monopulse radars have been developed after world war ii, with rapid development along with military requirements. The monopulse antenna is a precision tracking antenna. The system can provide a plurality of beams simultaneously on a single pulse, wherein the beams comprise a sum beam for detecting the distance of a target and performing distance tracking and a difference beam for detecting the azimuth angle and the pitch angle information of two targets and performing angle tracking. The monopulse antenna only needs one echo pulse to obtain the distance and all the angular coordinate information of the target. Therefore, the target angle information can be rapidly measured, the orientation is accurate, and the anti-interference capability is strong.
The cassegrain antenna is one of the most common forms of monopulse antenna, the basic structure of which includes a feed, a primary reflector, a secondary reflector, a support structure, and a sum and difference network. The basic working principle is as follows: the electromagnetic wave with spherical wave front is emitted by the equivalent phase center of the feed source and is irradiated onto the sub-reflecting surface, the spherical wave can be equivalently regarded as the electromagnetic wave emitted from the right half focus of the hyperboloid according to the geometrical and optical characteristics of the hyperboloid, the electromagnetic wave is irradiated onto the main reflecting surface and then is subjected to secondary radiation, and the electromagnetic wave is superposed in phase in a far field area to form a high-gain beam. Compared with a parabolic antenna with a single reflecting surface, the Cassegrain antenna has the outstanding advantages of short feeder distance, long equivalent focal length, flexible design and the like.
The planar array antenna is a novel antenna formed by combining the advantages of a parabolic antenna and a large-scale array antenna. Compared with a parabolic antenna, the planar array antenna has the advantages that the planar reflection array surface replaces a parabolic curved surface reflection surface, flexible wave beams are easy to realize, the weight is light, and the processing is easy; compared with a large microstrip array antenna, the planar array antenna adopts a space feed mode, so that the loss caused by a complex feed network is avoided, and the gain and the efficiency of the antenna are improved. In 2016, Zhao Ganning, university of electronic technology, designed a Ka-band Cassegrain monopulse antenna using a planar array structure. The longitudinal length of the antenna is only 67.85% of that of the traditional equivalent Cassegrain antenna, the compact design of the antenna is realized, but the aperture efficiency of the antenna is only 22.43%. Therefore, how to improve the aperture efficiency of the planar array cassegrain single-pulse antenna is a main problem to be solved by the invention.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention provides a Cassegrain monopulse antenna based on a planar array structure. The antenna effectively solves the problem of low aperture efficiency of the planar array structure Cassegrain monopulse antenna by adopting the main reflecting surface in the form of the groove formed by a plurality of array surfaces, and has the advantages of high gain, simple structure, easiness in processing and the like.
The invention adopts the following technical scheme:
a Cassegrain monopulse antenna based on a planar array structure comprises a feed source, a main reflecting surface, an auxiliary reflecting surface, a supporting structure and a sum-difference network.
The feed source is a horn antenna, is arranged at the central opening of the main reflecting surface, is connected with a sum-difference network at the rear end through a flange, and keeps a feed mode of positive feed.
The supporting structure comprises a main reflecting surface substrate, an auxiliary reflecting surface substrate and a supporting rod for fixing the main reflecting surface substrate and the auxiliary reflecting surface substrate; the front surface of the main reflecting surface substrate is used for supporting and fixing the main reflecting surface, and the auxiliary reflecting surface substrate is used for supporting and fixing the auxiliary reflecting surface.
The secondary reflecting surface is a metal hyperboloid arranged right above the main reflecting surface.
The aperture surface of the main reflecting surface is circular; the main reflecting surface is formed by splicing a square plane array and four fan-shaped plane arrays which are arranged on the periphery of the square plane array and have the same block size; the included angle between the sector plane and the square plane array is 33.27 degrees;
furthermore, the square planar array and the fan-shaped planar array are formed by periodically arranging passive microstrip resonance units, and each passive microstrip resonance unit comprises a dielectric substrate, a metal patch arranged on the upper surface of the dielectric substrate and a metal layer covering the lower surface of the dielectric substrate. The size of each metal patch is adjusted to compensate the spatial phase difference, so that the reflected waves obtained by the electromagnetic waves radiated by the feed source through the main reflecting surface realize equal phase superposition on the vertical plane of the preset radiation direction, and a high-gain pencil beam is formed.
Further, the shape of the metal patch is a basic resonance unit structure such as a rectangular patch, a parallel vibrator, a rectangular ring, a circular ring and the like, or a combination of the basic resonance unit structures.
Furthermore, the sum and difference network adopts a sum and difference device in a waveguide form, is fixed on the back surface of the main reflecting surface substrate and provides a sum and difference signal for the single pulse antenna.
Compared with the prior art, the invention has the beneficial effects that:
(1) the main reflecting surface of the antenna realizes required phase distribution by adjusting the size of each passive microstrip resonance unit, and the design freedom degree and the flexibility are improved.
(2) According to the antenna, the main reflecting surface in the groove form is formed by the plurality of array surfaces, compared with a single plane reflecting surface with the same aperture, the incident angle of a wave beam irradiated on the edge of the aperture surface is reduced, and the phase compensation precision of the edge unit is increased. Therefore, the aperture efficiency of the antenna is effectively improved.
(3) The sum-difference network adopts a waveguide-type sum-difference device, feeds by using standard waveguides, has extremely low loss, is easy to be electrically and structurally connected with an antenna rear-end module, and greatly improves the integration level of the single-pulse antenna.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the overall structure of a Cassegrain monopulse antenna according to an embodiment of the present invention.
Fig. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a metal hyperboloid subreflector in the embodiment of the invention.
Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of a four-horn feed source structure in an embodiment of the present invention.
Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a planar reflective array antenna unit according to an embodiment of the present invention.
Fig. 5 is a schematic diagram of the whole structure of the monopulse antenna sum-difference device and the cover plate in the embodiment of the invention.
Fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a base plate of a monopulse antenna sum-difference device in an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of a main reflective surface of a monopulse antenna according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 8 is a phase shift curve for a monopulse antenna element according to an embodiment of the present invention.
Fig. 9 shows the directional diagram of the monopulse antenna and the beam at the frequency point of 16GHz in the embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 10 is a diagram of a differential beam of a monopulse antenna at frequency point 16GHz according to an embodiment of the present invention.
Detailed Description
The present invention will be further described with reference to specific embodiments for better illustrating the objects, advantages and solutions of the present invention. It should be noted that the following specific examples are implemented on the premise of the technical solutions of the present invention, and are only used for better explaining the present invention, and are not used for limiting the present invention.
The embodiment is a cassegrain monopulse antenna based on a planar array structure and working at a central frequency point of 16 GHz. Referring to fig. 1, the cassegrain monopulse antenna of the present embodiment is composed of a main reflector 1, a support structure, a sub-reflector 3, a feed source 4, and a sum-difference network 5. The supporting structure comprises a main reflecting surface substrate 6, an auxiliary reflecting surface substrate 7 and four supporting rods 2 fixedly connected with the main reflecting surface substrate and the auxiliary reflecting surface substrate.
The main reflecting surface 1 is fixed on a main reflecting surface substrate 6, and a through hole with the caliber of 60mm is arranged in the middle and is used for connecting the feed source 4 with the sum-difference network 5. The sum and difference network 5 is fixed to the back surface of the main reflection surface substrate 6 by screws. The sub-reflecting surface 3 is fixed on the sub-reflecting surface substrate 7 and is positioned at a position 75mm right above the main reflecting surface 1.
The sub-reflecting surface 3 is an aluminum hyperboloid structure, and the caliber size is 60mm, see fig. 2. According to the geometrical optical characteristics of the hyperboloid, when the electromagnetic wave emitted by the feed source 4 irradiates the sub-reflecting surface, the electromagnetic wave can be equivalent to the electromagnetic wave emitted from the equivalent virtual focus of the sub-reflecting surface. The electromagnetic wave is irradiated onto the main reflecting surface 1 and is reflected for the second time to form a directional beam with equal phase and high gain.
In this embodiment, the feed source is a four-horn feed source and is disposed at the central opening, as shown in fig. 3. The feed source is connected with the sum-difference network 5 through a flange, and the position of the feed source is adjusted to feed in a positive feed mode.
In the embodiment, the main reflecting surface 1 is formed by splicing a square plane array 14 and four fan-shaped plane arrays 15 which are arranged on the periphery of the square plane array and have the same block size; the included angle between the fan-shaped planar array and the square planar array is 33.27 degrees; the aperture of the main reflecting surface is circular in plan view, and the diameter is 210 mm. Compared with the main reflecting surface with the same aperture surface formed by a single circular wavefront, the main reflecting surface of the embodiment can effectively reduce the incident angle of the electromagnetic wave at the edge of the wavefront. The problem that when the incident angle is too large, the phase shifting precision of the unit is reduced is solved, and the aperture efficiency of the antenna is improved from 30.7% to 47.5%.
In the embodiment, the passive microstrip resonance units are adopted to form a planar array, and the unit phase is compensated by changing the size of each patch. The phase compensation mode not only has better working bandwidth and multi-polarization performance and high radiation efficiency, but also has simpler simulation design and processing. Referring to fig. 4, the unit structure of this embodiment includes a metal patch 8, a dielectric substrate 9, and a metal ground layer 10. The dielectric substrate material adopts Rogers5880, the dielectric constant is 2.2, the loss tangent value is 0.0009, and the thickness of the dielectric substrate is 3.175 mm. In this embodiment, the phase to be compensated is calculated by using the optical path difference between the center of each unit from the phase center of the feed source to the sub-reflector and then to the main reflector, so as to determine the size of each unit metal patch and obtain the distribution of the patch units in the main reflector 1, as shown in fig. 7.
The metal patch in this embodiment is formed by two concentrically arranged square rings, that is, two resonant structures exist in the same resonant unit. Suppose the outer side of the outer square ring is Lx1, the outer side of the inner square ring is Lx2, and a scaling factor k is satisfied between Lx1 and Lx 2. The reflection phase curve of the resonant cell describes the resonant cell reflection phase versus Lx 1. Since the resonant unit has two resonant structures, the resonant unit has two resonant points in the variation range of Lx 1. In the vicinity of the resonance point, the reflection phase of the resonance unit changes drastically, and the phase curve is steep. By optimizing the scale factor k, the positions of the two resonance points can be optimized, so that the reflection phase curve of the resonance unit can meet the maximum phase shift range of 360 degrees, and has good linearity. The scale factor k is Lx2/Lx1 is 0.65, and the phase shift curve of the resonant cell is shown in fig. 8.
The sum and difference network designed in this embodiment is composed of 43 dB directional couplers and 4 90 degree phase shifters, and the overall size of the sum and difference network is 240mm × 190 mm. Referring to fig. 5 and 6, the integral structure of the sum and difference device is composed of a bottom plate and a cover plate, and the materials are all aluminum metal plates. Wherein, the cover plate comprises a feed source connecting port 11; the base plate contains a sum and difference network slotted portion 12 and a standard rectangular waveguide connector 13.
Fig. 9 and 10 show the sum beam and the difference beam patterns at the central frequency point of 16GHz of the cassegrain monopulse antenna in this embodiment, respectively. Wherein, the sum beam gain is 27.7dB, the width is 5.3 degrees, and the aperture efficiency is 47.5 percent. The sum-difference contradiction between the pitch difference and the azimuth difference is respectively 3.77dB and 4.2dB, and the zero depth of the difference wave beam is less than-25 dB.
The above examples are only for illustrating the technical idea and features of the present invention, and are only used for describing the present invention in detail, so that those skilled in the art can understand the content of the present invention and implement the present invention, and the protection scope of the present invention is not limited thereby. All equivalent changes and modifications made in accordance with the teachings of the present invention are intended to be included within the scope of the present invention.