Low-Cost Circularly Polarized Millimeter-Wave Antenna Using 3D Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

An efficient single-layer printed feed is used with a low-cost 3D printed polarizer. The feed is made on a single substrate layer. The proposed antenna gain is 15 dBi, and the overlapped impedance-axial ratio bandwidth is 20%. The proposed structure is a low-cost structure that can be fabricated in any modest fabrication facility. The feed does not require any plated vias, which tremendously simplifies the fabrication process and lowers the cost. The feed is very well suited for integration with integrated circuit transceiver systems. The proposed structure does not require any feeding network design. Hence, it relaxes the design process and avoids the losses associated with such feeding network. The proposed element can be employed in an array configuration with adequately suppressed side lobes. The element cost, simplicity, and gain performance are superior to other proposed solutions in the literature.INDEX TERMS Additive manufacturing, circular polarization, high gain antennas, low-cost antennas.

Exploring Gap Waveguide Solutions: A Review of Millimeter-Wave Beamforming Components and Antennas for Advanced Applications

“…To offer a practical remedy for surface roughness, a PEC-AMC configuration can be employed to suppress leakage between substrates in multilayer devices. Additionally, several antenna structures have been proposed to support various applications using microstrip line technology in the mm-wave range and beyond [75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85]. However, they often experience significant performance deterioration due to surface waves, high dielectric losses, and leakages in the mm-wave spectrum.…”

“…The existing guiding structures, encompassing microstrip lines, rectangular waveguides, and substrateintegrated waveguides (SIW), pose significant limitations and challenges, particularly at higher frequencies [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84]. Microstrip lines exhibit notable dielectric losses and susceptibility to leakages due to line bending, alongside the emergence of surface waves and cavity mode excitation at elevated frequencies.…”

Millimeter-wave planar antenna array augmented with a low-cost 3D printed dielectric polarizer for sensing and internet of things (IoT) applications

“…The unit cell analysis is equivalent to an infinite structure of 3D printed dielectric strips. The unit cell analysis assumes a plane wave incidence on an infinite structure, therefore, the designed polarizer dimensions using the unit cell analysis has to be tuned to take into account the waveform of the source (i.e., the antenna), and the fact that the realized dielectric polarizer will be truncated at the edges (i.e., not an infinite structure) 66 , 67 . The operation of the dielectric polarizer can be explained by decomposing an incident plane wave with 45° angle into two components, parallel and perpendicular or (TE and TM components) as shown in Fig.…”