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Abstract

An electrically scanned phased array with low sidelobes and tapered aperture illumination is disclosed. The array is fed by a uniform corporate feed network (55) and includes a main array aperture formed by main radiating elements (72-75) and first and second ancillary arrays formed by ancillary radiating elements (70-71) and (76-77). For a linear aperture, the outputs from the feed network (55) are phase shifted to steer the beam to one of the available beam locations, and coupled to corresponding ones of the main array radiating elements (72-75) and the ancillary array radiating elements (70-71or 76-77). The beam steering phase shifts invoke uniform phase gradients between the elements of the respective array, and bi-state phase correctors (85-88) are provided to correct for phase gradient discontinuities across the main and ancillary array apertures. The coupling values between the respective elements of the main array radiating elements (72-75) and the corresponding ancillary array radiating elements (70-71and 76-77) are selected to provide a desired aperture illumination, such as a tapered aperture illumination. The array may be constructed with identical modules, resulting in improved performance at lower cost.

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First Claim