Air-Filled Substrate Integrated Waveguide Fed Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna Array for Millimeter-Wave Applications

Abstract

A substrate integrated magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna array with an improved radiation efficiency is presented in the 28-GHz band. A novel full-corporate air-filled substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) feed network with low losses is designed and realized by utilizing the low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) facilities. Different from most previous millimeter-wave planar arrays consisting of 2 × 2 sub-arrays, an SIW fed sub-array with a larger size of 2 × 4 is investigated to simplify the configuration of the major portion of the array feed network, which is of importance to the successful realization of the air-filled SIW feed network. An 8 × 8 array prototype with a four-layered geometry is fabricated and measured to verify the design. The array has an impedance bandwidth of 25.9%, a gain up to 26 dBi and stable radiation patterns over the operating band. Benefitted from the absence of the significant dielectric loss in the feed network, a high antenna efficiency of 80% is also achieved. The proposed design provides an effective method to improve the achievable gain and efficiency characteristics of the substrate integrated arrays with a large size that are attractive for millimeter-wave wireless applications.