Corrugated SIW L-folded antipodal parabolic tapered slot antenna

Abstract

In this paper, corrugated SIW L-folded antipodal parabolic Tapered Slot Antenna (TSA) is proposed and demonstrated for the very first time. Compared to other reported SIW TSA, this design achieves foot-print reduction by a factor of nearly two and excellent radiation pattern symmetry. This structure can easily be designed to obtain either 45° or -45° polarization. Moreover, this single element shows advantages over other reported end-fire TSA for arrays, namely, it can achieve a lower spacing between elements to obtain reduced side-lobe level (SLL) and 45° or -45° polarizations as well as reduced coupling between adjacent elements. To feed this antenna, an L-Folded SIW (LFSIW) line is introduced. An L-junction from SIW to LFSIW is also proposed and studied. The gain of single L-folded element is 13 dBi compared to 15.1 dBi for the unfolded antenna. However, the folded antenna provides an 8.5 dB improvement in the coupling level between adjacent elements.