Substrate-Integrated Cavity-Backed Patch Arrays: A Low-Cost Approach for Bandwidth Enhancement

Abstract

The substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) technology is utilized as an alternative low-cost approach in fabricating cavity-backed patch antennas. The proposed antenna arrays combine the attractive features of the conventional metalized cavity-backed patch arrays like surface wave suppression, high radiation efficiency, and enhanced bandwidth, yet provide a low manufacturing cost. A previously developed design of a 2 2 SIW cavity-backed microstrip patch sub-array is extended here and used as a basic building block to attain larger arrays of 2 4, 4 4, and 8 8 elements. The fabricated arrays have been measured and demonstrate good agreement with their simulated performance. The design and performance of these arrays are compared to other conventional bandwidth enhancement techniques, which prove SIW as a viable alternative.Index Terms-Cavity-backed, microstrip array, substrate integrated waveguide.

Bandwidth-Enhanced Low-Profile Cavity-Backed Slot Antenna by Using Hybrid SIW Cavity Modes

“…The bandwidth improvement of the proposed antenna is from 2.3% to 14% when the substrate thickness increases from to , which is far more than that from 0.8% to 2.1% of the previously presented antenna in [7]. Compared with a bandwidth enhanced SIW cavity-backed patch antenna array presented in [12] with bandwidth of 10% and total height of , the proposed antenna has more compact profile (total height of ) with 10.8% bandwidth. …”

“…A bandwidth enhanced SIW cavity-backed patch antenna array has been demonstrated in [12], whose impedance bandwidth is more than 10%. SIW cavity-backed patch antennas for circularly polarized application have been presented in [13], whose impedance bandwidths are more than 14%.…”

60-GHz Circularly Polarized Antenna Array Made in Low-Cost Fabrication Process

“…Various substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) feeding microstrip antenna arrays have been well documented in [4]- [8] and [11]- [17]. At 60 GHz, high-performance antennas with excellent CP purity fabricated in low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology were reported in [9]- [11].…”

Performance Degradation of Cavity Backed Patch Antenna Due to Dielectric Coating and Its Improvement

“…This two stage process increases total fabrication cost of antenna and makes structure assembly complicated [3]. Substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) has been suggested as alternative fabrication technology for low cost implementation of waveguide-like components and antennas using standard PCB fabrication technology [4][5][6][7][8]. SIW cavity backed patch antennas exhibit same radiation performance as that of conventional metal cavity backed patch antennas along with advantages of low profile, easy fabrication and planar integration [9][10][11][12].…”