Micromachined Wideband Ridge Gap Waveguide Power Divider at 220–325 GHz

Sadia Farjana,Per Lundgren,Ashraf Uz Zaman,Peter Enoksson

doi:10.1109/access.2022.3156095

Abstract

A micromachined ridge gap waveguide power divider operating at 220–325 GHz is presented. The device is fabricated by SUEX dry film photoresist. Dry film photoresist can be used to obtain geometrical features with high accuracy using a robust fabrication process. The designed power divider has simple geometrical features and a wide band performance. The measured transmission coefficients are equal to −3.5 ± 0.4 dB at 220–325 GHz and the measured input reflection coefficient is below −12 dB at 220–325 GHz. The measurement results are in good agreement with simulations, demonstrating that the proposed fabrication method is suitable for the fabrication of waveguide components operating at the millimeter and sub-millimeter wave range. The presented low-loss ridge gap waveguide power divider may enable cost-effective and rapid fabrication of passive devices such as high gain antennas operating up to THz frequencies.

Highlights

Millimeter-wave, and submillimeterwave technologies have gained increasing attention to provide more available bandwidth and higher capacity [1]
In this paper we demonstrate a ridge gap waveguide (RGW) based power divider fabricated by SUEX dry film photoresist
A RGW power divider fabricated by dry film photoresistbased micromachining has been presented

Summary

Introduction

Millimeter-wave (mmWave), and submillimeterwave (sub-mmWave) technologies have gained increasing attention to provide more available bandwidth and higher capacity [1]. One of the advantages offered by higher frequencies is the reduced size of the waveguide components, which leads to more compact systems. At the same time there are increasing challenges in fabrication of components as the feature size becomes very small. Until now the most used waveguide components manufacturing method is machine-based computer numerical control (CNC) milling. The achievable accuracy by this method is inadequate in many cases, especially for submillimeterwave frequencies [2]. Due to the serial nature of the process, the cost for devices built in this way is very high and not suitable for many applications. At this point micromachining offers significantly better precision and flexibility compared to CNC milling. Micromachining is a parallel process, and offers the potential for low-cost volume production

Methods

Results

Conclusion