A novel dual-band millimeter-wave antenna for automotive radar and multi-gigabit wireless communications

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a novel dual-band millimeter-wave antenna for simultaneous automotive radar (77 GHz, 79 GHz) and multi-gigabit wireless communications (60 GHz). The proposed antenna covers two major frequency bands in the range of 58–64.2 GHz and 74.7–85.3 GHz. The antenna incorporates a quasi-yagi architecture and uses a truncated ground plane to achieve end-fire radiation characteristics. It consists of an ultra-wideband microstrip to slot-line transition and a novel radiator element to realize dual band features. The gain of antenna ranges from 5.7–7.2 dBi in the endfire direction over the entire frequency range of interest with an excellent radiation efficiency of more than 98%. The antenna is suitable for 77 GHz Long Range Radar (LRR), 79 GHz Short Range Radar (SRR) and 60 GHz ISM, vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications. Other attractive applications include high capacity chip-to-chip and mobile communications. The main contribution of this work is that a single antenna can be used for all of the aforementioned applications thus a compact RF frontend circuitry can be realized and will also help in reducing the total number of antennas/sensors on a vehicle. This work demonstrates for the first time the smallest form factor (5 mm × 6.4 mm) dual-band antenna at 60 GHz plus 77 GHz bands. The design features a compact form factor of 8 mm × 5.4 mm. Moreover, a 1 × 8 MIMO array is also designed for high gain and beam steering mmWave radar applications.