Combined Planar Endfire Circularly Polarized Antenna Using Unidirectional Dielectric Radiator and Thin Substrate Integrated Waveguide Feeder

Abstract

This article proposes and presents a fully planar endfire circularly polarized (CP) antenna with mingled three-layer substrates. It consists of a unidirectional dielectric radiator (UDR) and an antipodal linearly tapered slot antenna (ALTSA) surrounded by a UDR. The ALTSA is fed by a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) on a thin substrate of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.05\lambda _{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , which can easily be integrated with RF subsystems. The UDR is fed by the ALTSA, which enables the UDR to enhance the original vertically polarized radiation rather than the horizontally polarized radiation from the ALTSA. Due to the polarization selectivity enhancement, an endfire CP antenna with a very thin substrate is created. An experimental prototype of the proposed antenna has been studied, designed, and measured. The measured impedance bandwidth of −10 dB covers a broadband of 29.7 GHz from 26.1 to 55.8 GHz, and the 3 dB AR bandwidth is 19.7 GHz ranging from 25.3 to 45 GHz. The measured gain is over 9 dBic from 27.8 GHz to over 32 GHz. A good performance with a small size of only <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.57\lambda _{0} \times 0.78\lambda _{0} \times 0.33\lambda _{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , including the CPW-SIW transition, makes it an attractive option in the development of high gain planar endfire CP antennas and arrays for 5G and B5G applications.