A Wide-Band High-Efficiency Hybrid-Feed Antenna Array for mm-Wave Wireless Systems

A wide-band and high-efficiency planar antenna array with a novel hybrid-feed structure is proposed in this article. By combing the coaxial-line feed magneto-electric (ME) dipoles with the aperture coupled dielectric cavity, a hybrid-feed 2 × 2-unit ME-dipole sub-array is invented. The low-loss ridge gap waveguide (RGWG) corporate-feed network is used to replace the high-loss substrate-based feed networks and high-cost RWG feed networks. New forms of RGWG H-plane divider are designed to build the RGWG feed network. An 8 × 8-unit ME-dipole antenna array is designed and fabricated to verify the validity of the array. The radiation part consists of two layers of a low-cost printed circuit board (PCB), and the feeding part consists of two copper plates manufactured by computer numerical control (CNC) milling. Measured results show that a relative bandwidth of 16.4% with |S11| < −10 dB is achieved, with a maximum radiation efficiency of 85%. The stable symmetric radiation patterns are observed in both the E-plane and H-plane, covering the operation band. Based on the measured results, a 16 × 16-unit ME-dipole antenna array is simulated. Results indicate that the proposed array has wide-band and high-efficiency features, which is suitable for large-scale array design in mm-wave wireless systems.

Triple-Band Uniform Circular Array Antenna for a Multi-Functional Radar System

A phased array radar has been developed toward an effective means for integrating multiple functionalities into one radar platform. The radar system necessitates the ability to operate at multiple frequencies simultaneously. In this paper, a triple-band uniform radial sub-array using a shared aperture antenna is proposed for a multi-functional radar system. An efficient placement of different radiating elements is realized based on the radial displacement of the circular array. In addition, multi-layer feed networks are used to reduce the intricacy of integrating several feed networks into one antenna. The reasonable matching characteristics and far-field gain are acquired at the S-band, C-band, and X-band. The measured results of the prototype are presented, and the results are compared to the simulation, which showed a good agreement.