An Integration Platform for Dual-Polarized W-Band Antenna Arrays

A few NASA decadal missions such as the Aerosol Clouds Ecosystems (ACE) mission require space-based millimeter-wave radar apertures to complete the science objectives. We propose to create dual-polarized microfabricated copper-based antenna apertures with integrated MMICs that go beyond the capabilities funded to date at the upper frequencies of interest by enabling electronic scanning at W-band frequencies, while not precluding the co-location of Ka-band capability in the same aperture. This Phase I effort will constitute element-, feed-, MMIC-, and array-level analyses of the trade space for the proposed aperture. In addition we will provide a hardware demonstration of MMIC integration on the necessary scale for W-band phased arrays and high-efficiency dual polarized antenna elements. The Phase II effort would integrate MMIC functionality with the antennas to create an array tile that will be fully characterized.