LP-RLSA Design for Low Cost Transportable BASYLIS Radar

The increasing of small-distributed facilities expected in the next future has addressed the necessity of having low cost, transportable radar systems. In turn, it requires the design of high gain, low cost, planar, robust and easy to assemble antennas. In this scenario, the possibility of using a laser cutting technology in manufacturing a linearly polarized radial line slot array (RLSA) has been investigated. An ad hoc optimization algorithm, that takes into account the physical mechanism beyond the RLSA antenna, has been developed to obtain low antenna side lobe levels, as required by the specific BASYLIS radar application. The optimization technique allows to use nearresonance radiating slots and cancelling slots that are all closely spaced on the upper plate of the RLSA. The measurements carried out on the antenna prototype show very good performances despite the use of low cost materials and manufacturing technology.