A Broadband Full-Corporate-Fed Slot Array Antenna Based on the Single-Layer Substrate Integrated Waveguide

Abstract

A single-layer corporate-fed substrate integrated waveguide slot array antenna is newly proposed and verified. It is characterized by low profile, easy fabrication, low cost, low sidelobes, wideband operation, and high efficiency. A V-band $16\times 16$ -element array with uniform excitation is designed for demonstration. The radiating elements and feeding waveguides are arranged within a single-layer substrate, whose dielectric constant and loss tangent are appropriately selected. By adopting the full-corporate feed, the $16\times 16$ radiating slots are excited by the $16\times 16$ output ports of the feeding circuit, which is composed of cascaded H-plane T-junctions. For further bandwidth improvement, a metal grid plate is introduced on the top of the radiating slots. The test antenna is fabricated by the conventional PCB process. The measured bandwidth for $\vert S_{11}\vert < -10$ dB is 16.2%, fully covering the 57–67 GHz frequency range. Meanwhile, the measured antenna gain higher than 30 dBi associated with the antenna efficiency higher than 45% is achieved over the $58-65$ GHz frequency range.

Keywords

• Slot array antenna
• substrate integrated waveguide
• single-layer structure
• full corporate feed
• broadband design