2644 | ZHAO ET AL.

Received: 19 March 2017 The corrugated conical horn and diagonal horn antenna is
DOI: 10.1002/mop.30800 considered as a preferable design.3,4 However, THz diagonal
antenna is even more difficult and costly to be fabricated
through conventional machining methods because its size at
Experimental realization of THz is in the order of micrometer, or even smaller. Fortu-
micromachined terahertz nately, such problems can be solved by the micromachining
technology with high accuracy particularly for THz antennas
multistepped quasi-diagonal and passive devices.5 As highly efficient radiation antennas,
some classical types of horn antennas, for example, the
horn antenna pyramidal horn,6,7 corrugated conical horn,8 and diagonal
horn9,10 have been studied and fabricated in THz by using
Pengfei Zhao | Yong Liu | Xin lv micromachining technology. The pyramidal and diagonal
horn are mainly fabricated based on the anisotropically
etched silicon technology and the etching angle is fixed as
Beijing Key Laboratory of Millimetre Wave and Terahertz Technology, 54.78, which is equal to that between (111) and (100) crystal
Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Information and
Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081,
planes of the silicon wafer. Thus, the pyramidal horn has a
People’s Republic of China fixed half-flare angle of 35.38 (90–54.7) and exhibits rela-
tively low gain with beamwidths of 548 and 628 in the E-
Correspondence
plane and H-plane, respectively.6 The diagonal horn pro-
Yong Liu, Beijing Key Laboratory of Millimetre Wave and Terahertz
Technology, Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Information
posed in refs. [9,10] can be etched with any flare angle, but
and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, its aperture size is limited due to limited thickness of the sili-
People’s Republic of China. con wafer.
Email: [email protected] In this article, we innovatively present the THz multi-
Funding information stepped isosceles trapezoid quasi-diagonal horn antenna
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences working at 500 GHz. The proposed horn antenna is fabri-
cated by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technology, and
Abstract its profile curve is approximated by a discontinuous multi-
stepped isosceles trapezoid. The multistepped configuration
A design of a terahertz (THz) quasi-diagonal horn antenna
is adopted because it can be easily applied to the linear imag-
with multistepped isosceles trapezoid slots based on the
ing array as well.
micromachining technology is presented. The radiation
patterns are designed to be with high Gaussian coupling
efficiency. The radiation patterns, VSWR, gain are meas- 2 | ANTENNA STRUCTURE AND
ured, and good agreements with the simulated results are DESIGN
found.
The horn antenna’s structure is formed by a stacked silicon
KEYWORDS wafer, as shown in Figure 1. The left side of the wafer
micromachining, multistepped, quasi-diagonal, THz (cross-section A–A0 ) acts as a wr2.2-fed waveguide with
the cross-section of 560 3 280 lm, the remaining parts of
the wafers act as the mouth of the horn. Two silicon

1 | INTRODUCTION

Millimeter and terahertz (THz) band technologies have

attracted worldwide interests in recent years because they
can support various applications, such as extremely high-
speed wireless communication, medical imaging, and secu-
rity imaging at the traffic station, especially in detecting plas-
tic weapons and drugs beneath the clothes.1,2 To be applied
especially in the THz focal plane imaging systems, the corre-
sponding antennas need to be carefully designed with suita-
ble characteristics, including the high Gaussian coupling F I G U R E 1 Configuration of the proposed multistepped quasi-
efficiency (i.e., Gaussicity), high gain, and low side-lobe. diagonal horn. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
ZHAO ET AL.
| 2645

FIGURE 2 Cross-sections of the horn at different planes

FIGURE 3 Configuration of the layers: A, Details of layer 1 and layer 2. B, Details of layer 3. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.
com]

wafers, each with 400 lm thickness, are bonded together to Five layers are used to keep the antenna’s gain above
form an 800 lm layer. The number of the layers determines 21 dBi, which is based on the aperture size of the horn. To
the aperture width (W) of the horn. All layers are mirror sym- simplify the design, the increments between the steps are
metrical to the middle layer of the horn. The half-flare angle set to be constant, as w1–w5. It is well known that for
theta can be adjusted by adjusting the length (L) of the horn diagonal horn antenna, the 458 radiation patterns develop
Figure 2 shows cross sections of the horn at different planes. observed shoulders in the intercardinal plane. The main
Details of bonded silicon layers are shown in Figure 3. reason is that for the diagonal horn, which is mainly
By DRIE technology, an isosceles trapezoid slot is etched excited by TE01\TE10 mode, the aperture field in the inter-
through each of the two wafers. After gold sputtering, the cardinal planes is not well tapered and does not vanish at
two wafers are bonded together by thermos compression. By the edges of the aperture. However, for the quasi-diagonal
etching isosceles trapezoid slots with different parameters, a
part of the multistepped opening flare structure is formed by
one layer, as shown in Figure 3A. The geometry of layer 3 is
different when compared with the others. It contains the
feeding waveguide and a step of isosceles trapezoid. The
feeding waveguide is formed by etching a square cross-
section channel on each wafer with 140 lm (t1–t2) depth,
which is equal to the half narrow walls of the wr2.2 wave-
guide. Details of the horn throat are shown in Figure 3B. All
surfaces are spurred with gold of 200 nm thickness. Finally,
all layers are stacked together by mechanical structures to
form the whole quasi-diagonal horn antenna. The profile
curve of the quasi-diagonal horn, as the aperture’s outline is
not linear as the traditional ones, is approximated by discon-
tinuous multistepped isosceles trapezoids. Figure 4 shows
the whole structure including the quasi-diagonal horn and F I G U R E 4 Photograph of the whole structure. [Color figure can be
the mechanical structure for testing. viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
2646 | ZHAO ET AL.

FIGURE 5 Distribution of the magnitude of the E-field on the horn aperture at 495 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

horn antenna proposed in this article, the outline of the The electric field distributions on the horn aperture are
aperture can be optimized to change the distribution of shown in Figure 5A,B with positive and initial value of k,
field in the intercardinal plane. A new parameter k is intro- respectively. It is obvious that the max magnitude of the
duced to measure the change of w3, where “2” and “1” electric field is distributed on the edge of the horn aperture in
represent shortening and extending, respectively. The other the intercardinal planes. Thus, the pattern shoulders in the
parameters among w1–w5 are changed relative to k to intercardinal plane are relatively high. When k is negative
maintain the five steps in an arc line. and equal to 20.3 mm, the electric field distribution on the
Figure 5 shows the simulated results of electric field dis- horn aperture is changed to nearly cosine distribution in the
tribution on the horn aperture with different k at 495 GHz. A E-plane, H-plane, and the intercardinal plane, as shown in
change in color from blue to red corresponds to a change in Figure 5C.
magnitude from 0 to max. The simulated radiation patterns in the intercardinal plane
with different k are shown in Figure 6; when k 5 0 mm, the
level of shoulders in the intercardinal plane is 214 dB. It
can be seen that compared with the initial value, the should-
ers increase with positive k, and decrease with negative k.
Levels of shoulders can achieve the value of 220.7 dB when
k is equal to 20.3 mm.
The gaussicity of the radiation pattern mainly depends on
the flare angle of the horn. As the improper flare angle may
impair the circular symmetry of the radiation performance,
the degree of the flare angle needs to be cautiously deter-
mined. The curves of gain and Gaussicity at 495 GHz chang-
ing along the decrease of the half-flare angle are shown in
Figure 7. Although the gain is kept above 21 dBi, especially
around 108, the Gaussicity can be relatively low by applying
F I G U R E 6 Simulated radiation patterns at 495 GHz in the intercar- improper half-flare angle. As the half-flare angle decreases to
dinal plane with different k. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlineli- about 78, the highest Gaussicity of nearly 90% is attained,
brary.com] along with the highest gain of 22.9 dBi.

T A BL E 1 Some geometric parameters of the proposed antenna

Parameter Unit (mm) Parameter Unit (mm)

Layer 1 L1 2.8 W1 1.1

L2 5.6 W2 1.7

Layer 2 L3 8.4 W3 2.5

L4 11.2 W4 3.4

Layer 3 L5 14 W5 4.5
t1 0.4 t2 0.26
ZHAO ET AL.
| 2647

FIGURE 7 Optimization of gain and gaussicity along with different

half-flare angles FIGURE 9 Measured and simulated VSWR of the proposed antenna

After optimization, the final design parameters are as fol- 490.36–500.36 GHz, respectively. The controller consists of
lows: half-flare angle u 5 78, total length of the horn L 5 16 mm, a 3D mechanical servo system and a computer terminal.
the width of the aperture W 5 4 mm. The rest remaining geomet- The VSWR of the AUT is tested using a vector network
ric parameters optimized in this article are listed in Table 1. analyzer (VNA) and an Oleson Microwave Lab (OML)
extender. The measured result of VSWR is below 1.25
within 490–500 GHz, the curve trend agrees well with the
3 | FABRICATION MEASUREMENT simulation, but with a little higher average value and 0.4%
AND DISCUSSION (about 2 GHz) frequency shifts, as shown in Figure 9.
The gain at 495 GHz of the AUT is characterized by com-
The antenna under test (AUT) is stacked up by elements paring with a 25 dB standard diagonal horn antenna (made by
scribed from wafer. Seven layers are used. Five layers in the Virginia Diodes Inc., VDI). The received IF powers of the
middle are to form the horn structure and 2 on both sides are AUT and the standard diagonal horn antenna are 216.4 and
to protect the cavity. 213.1 dB, respectively. Hence, the gain of AUT is 21.7 dBi,
A measurement setup containing a transmitter, a receiver, which is less than the simulated one due to the unpredictable
and a controller is installed to verify the radiation patterns, as loss caused by fabrication and assembling error.
shown in Figure 8. The transmitter chain is formed by an The measured and simulated radiation patterns are exhib-
MMW source, which generates continuous electromagnetic ited in Figure 10. The side lobes in the E-plane and H-plane
wave from 80 to 83.4 GHz, a six-time frequency multiplier, are lower than 220 dB. It is noted that in simulations, the
which moves the MMW to THz, and AUT with the text fix- minimum achievable side-lobe levels go down by more than
ture. The receiver is a THz superconducting hot-electron- 40 dB, which is limited by the restricted dynamic range of
bolometer super-heterodyne receiver system including an the chamber at theta 60.The main beams have nearly sym-
LHCP plane helix antenna and a lens. The intermediate fre- metric beamwidths in all planes with 3 dB beamwidth of
quency and local oscillator frequency are set to 0.36 and about 12.48, agreeing well with the simulated results.

FIGURE 8 Measured setup for testing the radiation patterns of the AUT. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
2648 | ZHAO ET AL.

FIGURE 10 Radiation patterns measurement of the proposed horn antenna: A, E- and H-plane at 490 GHz. B, E- and H-plane at 495 GHz. C, E- and
H-plane at 500 GHz. D, Intercardinal plane at 495 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

4 | CONCLUSION [4] Xu O. Diagonal horn Gaussian efficiency enhancement by

dielectric loading for submillimeter wave application at
150 GHz. Progr Electromagn Res Pier. 2011;114:177–194.
A THz quasi-diagonal horn antenna with multistepped isos-
[5] Lubecke VM, Mizuno K, Rebeiz GM. Micromachining for tera-
celes trapezoid slots based on silicon micromachining tech-
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VSWR is below 1.25 from 490 to 500 GHz. The far-field
[6] Rebeiz GM, Kasilingam DP, Guo Y, Stimson PA, Rutledge DB.
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agreeing well with the simulated results, which indicates that [7] Lu H-D, Lv X, Gao Z-J, Liu Y. Experimental radiation charac-
the proposed quasi-diagonal horn antenna is a good candi- teristics of micromachined terahertz low-profile corrugated horn
date as a feeder for THz imaging systems. antenna. Microwave Opt Technol Lett. 2015;57(2):364–367.
[8] Zhao PF, Lv X, Lu HD, Liu Y. Experimental realization of
micromachined terahertz corrugated conical horn antenna.
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This work was supported by the Purple Mountain Observa- [9] Johansson JF, Whyborn ND. The diagonal horn as a sub-
tory, Chinese Academy of Sciences. millimeter wave antenna. IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech.
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[2] Sheen DM, et al. Active millimeter-wave and sub-millimeter-
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Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz), 2011 36th International Con- mental realization of micromachined terahertz multi-
ference on. stepped quasi-diagonal horn antenna. Microw Opt
[3] Wang GQ, Shi SC. Comparison of the Performance of Technol Lett. 2017;59:2644–2648. https://doi.org/10.
Corrugated, Smooth-Walled and Diagonal Horns at 500GHz. 1002/mop.30800
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