A corrugated and lens based miniaturized antipodal Vivaldi antenna for 28 GHz and 38 GHz bands applications

Abstract The paper presents a dualband and compact antipodal Vivaldi antenna (AVA) array by using a dielectric lens (DL) and corrugations for 5G applications. The proposed novel antenna provides very high efficiency and it alleviates beam titling very effectively. Its efficiency is in the range of 95.93%–97.52% whereas the H plane beam titling is ± 1 ° $\pm 1{}^{\circ}$ over most of the frequency range. The antenna frequency response is improved by incorporating corrugations which results in the antenna miniaturization. The designed AVA array size is 2.86 × 3.58 × 0.06 λ g 3 ${{\lambda }_{g}}^{3}$ (for lower guided frequency). The proposed dualband antenna operates from 24.17 GHz to 29.37 GHz and 30.76 GHz to 40.58 GHz. These frequency bands cover 28 GHz and 38 GHz bands of 5G communications. Next, the front-to-back ratio is improved significantly which further results in the gain enhancement. Also, the grooves in the feeding network minimize reverse power reflections. The radiation pattern is stable and it shows that the designed antenna is a directional antenna. The antenna is designed, simulated, and tested by using a network analyzer and anechoic chamber. The testing and simulated results indicate that the proposed AVA array is the best candidate to integrate it in 5G devices.