Phase-Controlled Beamforming Network for Continuous Beam-Steering in Conformal Arrays

This paper describes a reconfigurable beamforming network that can be connected to a four-element circular array to perform continuous beam-steering on the azimuthal plane of the array. The network, which consists of a fourway power divider, four 90° hybridjunctions, two 90° fixed phase shifters and four variable phase shifters, is able to feed each couple of adjacent radiating elements with arbitrary power ratios, without spoiling the matching conditions of the other ports. That way, the maximum of the radiation pattern can be steered arbitrarily on the azimuthal plane only by varying the phases of the variable phase shifters of the network.