Magneto optical technique for beam steering by ferrite based patch arrays

An improved technique is presented to scan a beam of a phased antenna array on a ferrite substrate through use of time delays instead of phase shifts provided by nonlinear transmission lines coupled to elements of the array. A coplanar transmission line loaded with a varactor diode when subjected to varied optical illumination offers bias dependent time delays to the elements of the arrays over a wide range of tunable operating frequencies at lower UHF without scan blindness effect. This method results in a broadband ferrite based phased antenna array with reduced weight, loss and complexity of the integrated system. This technique has proved to have a special application potential in case of beam steering by ferrite based microstrip antenna arrays at lower UHF (800 MHz-2 GHz).