A Hybrid Antenna Array Design for 3-D Direction of Arrival Estimation

A 3-D beam scanning antenna array design is proposed that gives a whole 3-D spherical coverage and also suitable for various radar and body-worn devices in the Body Area Networks applications. The Array Factor (AF) of the proposed antenna is derived and its various parameters like directivity, Half Power Beam Width (HPBW) and Side Lobe Level (SLL) are calculated by varying the size of the proposed antenna array. Simulations were carried out in MATLAB 2012b. The radiators are considered isotropic and hence mutual coupling effects are ignored. The proposed array shows a considerable improvement against the existing cylindrical and coaxial cylindrical arrays in terms of 3-D scanning, size, directivity, HPBW and SLL.