Abstract
A wide-band and high-efficiency planar antenna array with a novel hybrid-feed structure is proposed in this article. By combing the coaxial-line feed magneto-electric (ME) dipoles with the aperture coupled dielectric cavity, a hybrid-feed 2 × 2-unit ME-dipole sub-array is invented. The low-loss ridge gap waveguide (RGWG) corporate-feed network is used to replace the high-loss substrate-based feed networks and high-cost RWG feed networks. New forms of RGWG H-plane divider are designed to build the RGWG feed network. An 8 × 8-unit ME-dipole antenna array is designed and fabricated to verify the validity of the array. The radiation part consists of two layers of a low-cost printed circuit board (PCB), and the feeding part consists of two copper plates manufactured by computer numerical control (CNC) milling. Measured results show that a relative bandwidth of 16.4% with |S11| < −10 dB is achieved, with a maximum radiation efficiency of 85%. The stable symmetric radiation patterns are observed in both the E-plane and H-plane, covering the operation band. Based on the measured results, a 16 × 16-unit ME-dipole antenna array is simulated. Results indicate that the proposed array has wide-band and high-efficiency features, which is suitable for large-scale array design in mm-wave wireless systems.
Highlights
We propose a wide-band high-efficiency ME-dipole antenna array with low fabrication cost for a mm-wave large-scale array design
The total array can be fabricated by low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) technology, computer numerical control (CNC) milling, and assembled without any expensive bonding process
A low fabrication cost hybrid-feed ME-dipole antenna array with wide-band highefficiency features for a mm-wave large-scale array design is presented in this paper
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Large-scale mm-wave antenna arrays are required to achieve high-gain, narrow beam-width, or multi-direction beams features [3,4,5] In these applications, both the efficiency, bandwidth, and fabrication cost must be considered in the antenna array design. The gap waveguide (GWG) technology [16,17,18] uses an artificial magnetic conductivity (AMC) boundary to build the side-wall of a rectangular waveguide Based on this technology, a low-loss waveguide transmission line can be fabricated without any expensive bonding process. We propose a wide-band high-efficiency ME-dipole antenna array with low fabrication cost for a mm-wave large-scale array design. Based on the measured results, a 16 × 16-unit ME-dipole array is designed; the simulated results indicate that the proposed array has wide-band and high-efficiency features
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