Air-Filled Substrate Integrated Waveguide Fed Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna Array for Millimeter-Wave Applications

Shan Da,Yujian Li,Junhong Wang

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2939873

Shan Da, Yujian Li + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2939873

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Abstract

A substrate integrated magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna array with an improved radiation efficiency is presented in the 28-GHz band. A novel full-corporate air-filled substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) feed network with low losses is designed and realized by utilizing the low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) facilities. Different from most previous millimeter-wave planar arrays consisting of 2 × 2 subarrays, an SIW fed sub-array with a larger size of 2 × 4 is investigated to simplify the configuration of the major portion of the array feed network, which is of importance to the successful realization of the air-filled SIW feed network. An 8×8 array prototype with a four-layered geometry is fabricated and measured to verify the design. The array has an impedance bandwidth of 25.9%, a gain up to 26 dBi and stable radiation patterns over the operating band. Benefitted from the absence of the significant dielectric loss in the feed network, a high antenna efficiency of 80% is also achieved. The proposed design provides an effective method to improve the achievable gain and efficiency characteristics of the substrate integrated arrays with a large size that are attractive for millimeter-wave wireless applications.

Highlights

High-gain planar antenna arrays are of significance to guarantee the required link-budget in millimeter-wave wireless communications [1]
COMPARISON AND DISCUSSION Geometry features and the operating performance of the proposed design are summarized in Table 6 to compare with the counterparts of the previous wideband high-gain arrays operating in millimeter-wave bands, including the substrateintegrated ones with the microstrip line, printed ridge gap waveguide and substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) feed networks, and the metallic arrays fed by the air-filled ridge gap waveguides and rectangular wavguides
A substrate-integrated aperture-coupled ME-dipole antenna array with a full-corporate air-filled SIW feed network has been investigated

Summary

INTRODUCTION

High-gain planar antenna arrays are of significance to guarantee the required link-budget in millimeter-wave wireless communications [1]. S. Da et al.: Air-Filled SIW Fed ME Dipole Antenna Array for Millimeter-Wave Applications resulting in a high aperture efficiency of the array [13]. A few works have been dedicated to design the millimeter-wave components and antennas based on the air-filled SIW technology [26]–[28], but the investigation on the high-gain antenna array fed by an air-filled SIW feed network has been seldom addressed up until now. A high-gain wideband substrate-integrated planar antenna array with an improved radiation efficiency is presented in the 28-GHz band in this paper. With the aid of the proposed 2 × 4 SIW-fed sub-array configuration that is different from the 2×2 ones in most reported substrate-integrated arrays, the designed novel full-corporate air-filled SIW feed network can be realized successfully by using the low-cost epoxy/glass (FR-4) PCB laminates.

ANTENNA GEOMETRY

Findings

CONCLUSION