Development of a wideband symmetric pillbox antenna with low side lobes in gap waveguide technology

Abstract

Abstract In this work, a symmetric pillbox antenna with low side lobes is designed, simulated and fabricated by using gap waveguide technology. The proposed antenna operates on the basis of the reflector antenna principle and provides a fan‐beam radiation pattern. In the proposed structure, the antenna aperture is loaded by a stepped discontinuity and a corrective pin to improve the side‐lobe level (SLL) and gain. The designed antenna impedance bandwidth (S11 < −10 dB) is 42% at the Ku band. Also, −15 dB < SLL < −10 dB and a gain of 16.6–18.7 dBi are achieved over the operating bandwidth. There is a good agreement between the simulated and measured results.

Keywords

• antennas
• antenna theory