Different gap waveguide slot array configurations for mmwave fixed beam antenna application

Abstract

In this work, we present several gap waveguide planar array antennas for millimeter wave point to point communication systems. The antennas are designed using groove gap waveguide, ridge gap waveguide and inverted microstrip gap waveguide technology. All these three antenna designs are based on the cavity-backed slots as the core radiating elements. There exists a coupling slot in the cavity layer which allows the excitation of the radiating slot elements using three different types of feeding waveguide section. The designed three antennas have 16×16 radiating slot elements and these antennas operate over 15% relative bandwidth from 57-66GHz frequency range with -13 dB reflection coefficient. The simulated directivity for these slot arrays are about 33.3 dBi at the center of the band.