Design of an End-Fire Efficient Superdirective Electrically Small Antenna Array
Résumé
This paper presents the design of an efficient end-fire parasitic superdirective array based on an electrically small antenna (ESA) (ka approximate to 1). The unit element is internally loaded with two inductances. With those loads the antenna exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 11 % with a radiation efficiency greater than 96 % in the whole frequency band of interest. The ESA based superdirective array achieves a maximal end-fire directivity of 9.3 dB at 780 MHz with a radiation efficiency greater than 80% To validate the simulation results, a prototype was fabricated and measured. The measurement are in a good agreement with simulation.