Overlapped Phased Array Antenna for Avalanche Radar

Ardeshir Tanha, Mandana; Brennan, Paul V.; Ash, Matthew; Kohler, Anselm; McElwaine, Jim

Abstract

Snow avalanche is a natural phenomenon, which annually causes infrastructure damage and leads to human casualties in many countries all over the world. As a result, a detailed hazard mapping is required to be able to understand the avalanche risk levels. Also, the scarcity of the areas suitable for constructing infrastructures in the mountains places a high premium on providing high precision hazard mapping. This paper presents the design and development of an advanced phased array antenna for an FMCW radar to produce a high resolution image of snow avalanche in range and cross-range. The proposed antenna is a 16-element fully populated phased array with ±14° azimuth beamwidth and ±22.5° fixed elevation angle. The designed phased array antenna has 14.4 dBi gain and -20.3 dB sidelobe level. In this design, subarraying overlapping technique has been used to eliminate undesirable grating lobes by means of spatial antialias filtering. A phased array power divider is proposed to allow tapering of the amplitude of the elements to achieve low sidelobe level.

Citation

Ardeshir Tanha, M., Brennan, P. V., Ash, M., Kohler, A., & McElwaine, J. (2017). Overlapped Phased Array Antenna for Avalanche Radar. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 65(8), 4017-4026. https://doi.org/10.1109/tap.2017.2712183

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 1, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jun 5, 2017
• Publication Date: Jun 5, 2017
• Deposit Date: Sep 13, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 11, 2017
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
• Print ISSN: 0018-926X
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-2221
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 4017-4026
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/tap.2017.2712183
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1344976