Abstract
A robust design of a 3D-printed 6–18 GHz double-ridged TEM horn antenna is proposed in this paper. The designed TEM horn antenna has two parts: an adaptor and a horn aperture. The adaptor is realized using a double-ridged waveguide to extend the operating bandwidth of the dominant mode (TE10 mode). Meanwhile, the horn aperture section is implemented in an exponentially tapered configuration to match the impedance of the double-ridged waveguide with the intrinsic impedance. The performance of the initially designed antenna shows that the reflection coefficient and gain levels are less than −13 dB and greater than 5.5 dBi within the 6–18 GHz band, respectively. The initial design was well done, but the noise factors that may occur during the manufacturing process were not taken into account. To design an antenna considering these noise factors, the parameters of the initial design are optimized by a novel robust design method also proposed in this paper. The robustness of the antenna optimized by the proposed method is approximately 12.4% higher than that of the initial antenna. The validity of the proposed method was tested by fabricating the antenna. A prototype of the optimized antenna with the proposed robust design method is fabricated using a 3D printer with a stereolithographic apparatus attached, and the surface of the frame is covered by a nano-silver plating. The measured results of the fabricated antenna are in good agreement with the simulation results over the operating band. The measured −10 dB reflection coefficient bandwidth of the antenna can cover 6–18 GHz. In addition, the measured gain ranges from 4.42 to 10.75 dBi within the 6–18 GHz band.
Highlights
Horn antennas are easy to fabricate and have good directional radiation performance.For these reasons, they are widely used in applications such as standard measurement equipment, radar, and communication systems [1]
The genetical swarm optimization (GSO) algorithm, a hybrid optimization algorithm which combines a genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), is employed to find a new combination of robust parameters against the noise factors, while the orthogonal array (OA) is employed to evaluate the robustness of the parameters
Unlike the noise test result of the initial antenna, all of the reflection coefficient levels in the noise test result fall under the −10 dB criteria in the 6–18 GHz band
Summary
Horn antennas are easy to fabricate and have good directional radiation performance. For these reasons, they are widely used in applications such as standard measurement equipment, radar, and communication systems [1]. The antennas are generally manufactured by milling or electro-forming processes with metallic materials. They are relatively heavy, incur high production costs, and take a long time to be fabricated [2]. The selective deposition of an extruded material (fused deposition modelling, FDM), the curing of resin with ultraviolet rays (stereolithography apparatus, SLA), powder binding
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