Dual-Polarized Planar-Printed Ultrawideband Antenna Array on a Triangular Grid

This article presents a dual-polarized planar-printed ultrawideband antenna array on an optimally sampled triangular (hexagonal) lattice. The design is based on the dual-polarized planar ultrawideband modular antenna (PUMA). In this article, the dual-polarized square lattice PUMA array is adapted to an equilateral triangular lattice for grating-lobe-free scanning at a 15.5% reduced element count. A prototype triangular lattice PUMA array is built and compared with a square lattice PUMA aperture of similar size. As configured, the triangular lattice array demonstrates an 8% larger aperture area with 7% fewer elements than the square lattice array. Modeling predictions are validated with measured results for embedded element performance. The triangular lattice PUMA is shown to compare favorably to the square lattice PUMA with modest performance compromises.