A Wideband Millimeter-Wave Corrugated Horn at 30–50 GHz Taking Advantage of All-Metal 3-D Printing Fabrication

Abstract

The development of commercial all-metal 3D-printing technology provides a new fabrication method for wideband millimeter-wave corrugated horns up to 50 GHz. Compared with conventional fabrication techniques, such as direct machining, electroforming or recently developed methods relying on the assembly of platelets, all-metal 3D-printing has advantages of low cost, fast delivery, possibility of mass production, flexibility in fabrication of complicated geometries and good mechanical robustness. In this letter, we report the development of a wideband millimeter-wave corrugated horn at 30-50 GHz (50% fractional bandwidth) based on commercial all-metal 3D-printing technology. Measurement results reported in this letter show good performance in terms of both return loss and cross-polarization.