Millimeter-Wave End-Fire Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna and Arrays With Asymmetrical Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line Feed

• Main Authors: Ao Li, Kwai-Man Luk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2021-01-01
• Series: IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation
• Subjects: Asymmetrical substrate integrated coaxial line (ASICL); end-fire radiation; magneto-electric (ME) dipole; millimeter-wave (mm-wave) antenna; multi-beam array
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9293000/

A wideband vertically-polarized end-fire magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna fed by an asymmetrical substrate integrated coaxial line (ASICL) is proposed for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) applications. The proposed ME dipole antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 60% and produces an end-fire radiation with a stable gain between 5.8 and 6.9 dBi in simulation. To verify the design concept and its application in arrays, a 1 × 8 linear array with a fixed beam and a 1 × 4 linear array with multiple beams are designed, fabricated and measured. The fabricated fixed-beam array prototype exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 62%, a peak gain of 15.9 dBi and a radiation efficiency of 79%. The multi-beam array is fed by a 4 × 4 ASICL Butler matrix. Experimentally, excellent beam scanning radiation patterns with reasonably low side lobes and low cross polarizations are demonstrated at 24, 30 and 36 GHz. And an overlapped operating bandwidth of 28.6% is achieved by the fabricated prototype.