Wide-band, phase scanned antenna

Claim 1

A wide-band, phase scanned antenna for transmitting a chirped pulse RF signal at a desired scan angle from broadside, comprising: a plurality of phase scanned sub-arrays, each being dimensioned to exhibit essentially no time delay error thereacross at the maximum scan angle of said antenna, one of said sub-arrays being a reference sub-array; a plurality of time variable phase shifters, each having an output port coupled to a different one of said sub-arrays, and each having a signal input port and a command input port; RF signal distribution circuit means for coupling a chirp pulsed RF signal to said signal phase shifters and to said reference sub-array; and pulse command means coupled to said command input ports of said phase shifters for providing to individual ones of said phase shifters an individual phase control command signal, the phase generated by each individual one of said phase shifters in response to said command signal being initially zero and linearly increasing for the duration of said chirped pulse RF signal and being proportional to the product of the sine of a desired antenna scan angle times the distance between the centers of a sub-array associated with each individual one of said phase shifters and said reference sub-array, the constant of proportionality being the frequency slope of said chirped pulse RF signal divided by the speed of light.