A Millimeter-Wave Filtering Monopulse Antenna Array Based on Substrate Integrated Waveguide Technology

Abstract

A millimeter-wave filtering monopulse antenna array based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology is proposed, manufactured, and tested in this communication. The proposed antenna array consists of a filter, a monopulse comparator, a feed network, and four antennas. A square dual-mode SIW cavity is designed to realize the monopulse comparator, in which internal coupling slots are located at its diagonal lines for the purpose of meeting the internal coupling coefficiencies in both sum and difference channels. Then, a four-output filter including the monopulse comparator is synthesized efficiently by modifying the coupling matrix of a single-ended filter. Finally, each SIW resonator coupled with those four outputs of the filter is replaced by a cavity-backed slot antenna so as to form the proposed filtering antenna array. A prototype is demonstrated at Ka band with a center frequency of 29.25 GHz and fractional bandwidth of 1.2%. Our measurement shows that, for the H-plane, the sidelobe levels of the sum pattern are less than -15 dB and the null depths of the difference pattern are less than -28 dB. The maximum measured gain of the sum beam at the center operating frequency is 8.1 dBi.