2126 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO.

6, JUNE 2010

Low-Cost High Gain Planar Antenna Array for 60-GHz

Band Applications
Xiao-Ping Chen, Ke Wu, Liang Han, and Fanfan He

Abstract—An effective development of a class of low-cost planar an-

tenna arrays having a high reproducibility is presented for 60-GHz band
system applications. The proposed antenna arrays, based on the substrate
integrated waveguide (SIW) scheme, consists of one compact SIW 12-way
power divider and 12 radiating SIWs each supporting 12 radiating slots.
A 50- conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CBCPW) integrated with
CBCPW-to-SIW transition is directly used as the input of the antenna
array, thus allowing to accommodate other circuits or MMICs at a
minimum cost. An antenna array prototype was implemented on Rogers
RT/Duroid 6002 substrate with thickness of 20 mils by our standard PCB
process. Measured gain is about 22 dBi with a side lobe suppression of 25
dB in the H-plane and 15 dB in the E-Plane while the bandwidth for the
10-dB return loss is 2.5 GHz.
Index Terms—Planar antenna array, power divider, substrate integrated
Fig. 1. Geometric configuration of the proposed 60 GHz SIW slot antenna.
waveguide (SIW), 60-GHz band.

I. INTRODUCTION conductor loss among all the planar feeding structures [4]. However, the
complicated 3D waveguide structure has prevented its use in cost-sen-
60-GHz band wireless applications have recently received much
sitive commercial applications with few exceptions of military or pro-
attention because the allocated unlicensed bandwidth of 7 GHz enables
fessional applications. A drastic reduction of manufacturing cost of
attractive gigabit-per-second applications, including high definition
the waveguide arrays to the level of microstrip counterparts has been
multimedia interface, uncompressed high definition video streaming,
desired for a long time. Single-layer waveguides for a mass repro-
high-speed internet, wireless gigabit Ethernet, and close-range auto-
ducible planar array were presented in [5], [6]. All the waveguides
motive radar sensor. One of the most important parts of such systems is
consist of two parts, which are the top plate with slots and the bottom
the antenna since it strongly influences the overall receiver sensitivity
plate. Several types of single-layer waveguide arrays over 12-GHz and
and the link budget. With the consideration on the higher path loss
20-GHz bands intended for high efficiency and manufacturability were
and oxygen absorption of 15 dB/km around 60 GHz band, high-gain
developed and extended to higher frequencies up to 60-GHz. Neverthe-
and mass-reproducible planar arrays have strongly been desired. High
less, costly mechanical manufacturing is still required for single-layer
radiation efficiency is also important for the system cost reduction as
waveguide arrays and special transition structure should be used for
well as the system performance enhancement [1].
the integration with other planar circuits. Substrate integrated wave-
To date, a vast amount of different planar antennas have been studied
guide (SIW), also called post-wall waveguide or laminated waveguide
for millimeter-wave radio and radar applications. Although high gain
in some publications, is realized with two rows of metallised via-holes
operations have been demonstrated with microstrip patch antenna ar-
in a metal-clad dielectric substrate by standard print-circuit-board fab-
rays, these configurations suffer from serious loss in the millimetre-
rication technique at low cost. The antenna based on the SIW scheme
wave band; the efficiency decreases as the gain and/or frequency be-
can easily be integrated with other circuits, which leads to the cost-ef-
comes higher even though those antenna design techniques are basi-
fective subsystem. Some SIW slot antenna arrays and beam forming
cally mature. It was roughly estimated that the efficiency of microstrip
networks have been developed [7]–[10].
arrays with gain of 35 dBi would be lower than 20% in the 60 GHz
This communication extends the design of SIW antennas to 60-GHz
band [2]. On-chip antennas also have other drawbacks. Their radiation
band and a high-gain 60-GHz SIW slot antenna which can be directly
efficiency on conductive high-permittivity silicon is poor and in spite
integrated with other planar circuits was prototyped by our standard
of the short wavelength, they still occupy a non-negligible area on an
PCB process and experimentally demonstrated for its performance.
MMIC chip, which is an important cost factor. The situation is even
worse if arrays need to be realized to achieve necessary gain of about II. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA
15 to 20 dBi in order to bridge intended distances of up to 10 meters in
a WPAN environment [3]. Fig. 1 shows the geometric configuration of the proposed 60 GHz
On the other hand, waveguide slot antenna arrays are the most at- SIW slot array. With consideration on the dielectric properties and tem-
tractive candidates for high-gain planar antennas, having the smallest perature properties of dielectric substrate, Rogers/duroid 6002 with 0.5
oz. rolled copper foil is used in this work. Generally, a thick substrate
should be used to reduce the losses in connection with the top and
Manuscript received July 13, 2009; revised October 09, 2009; accepted Jan- bottom conductors and obtain appropriate offset for the design of radi-
uary 11, 2010. Date of publication March 29, 2010; date of current version June
03, 2010. This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engi-
ating slots. In this context, 50 conductor-backed coplanar waveguide
neering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. (CBCPW) with metalized via holes on both sides for the suppression
The authors are with the Poly-Grames Research Center, Department of Elec- of unexpected modes should be used as the input of antenna by using a
trical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (University of Montreal), transition between CBCPW and SIW. A 12-way SIW power divider is
QC H3T 1J4, Canada (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; deployed to feed 12 linear SIW slot arrays, and each of them carries 12
[email protected]; [email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail- radiation slots etched on the broad wall of SIW. The SIW structure is
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. terminated with a short-circuit three-quarter guided wavelength beyond
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2010.2046861 the centre of the last radiation slot. In order to allocate the slots at the

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JUNE 2010 2127

standing wave peaks and excite all the slots with the same phase condi-
tion (in-phase), the slots in a linear array are placed half a guided wave-
length at the required centre frequency and the adjacent slots have the
opposite offset with respect to the SIW centre line. The width of radia-
tion slot should be much smaller than the slot length, usually between
one tenth and one twentieth of slot length. This, of course, depends on
the bandwidth requirements. The detailed design procedure similar to
that presented in [11] is as follows.

A. Parameter Extraction of Isolated Radiation Slot

When a longitudinal slot in the broad wall of SIW is designed around
resonance and slot offset is not very big or very small, the forward
and backward wave scatterings from the slot are symmetrical in SIW
and then the slot can be equivalent to shunt admittance on transmission
line. According to the Stegen’s factorization [12], the equivalent shunt
admittance can be given as follows

Y (x; y ) Gr G + jB
= 1 = g (x)h(y ) = g (x) [h1 (y ) + jh2 (y )]
G0 G0 Gr
where x is the offset of slot, g (x) = Gr =G0 is the resonant conduc-
tance normalized to the conductance G0 of SIW, h(y ) = h1 (y ) +
jh2 (y) = (G + jB )=Gr is the ratio of slot admittance to resonant
conductance, y = l=l(x; f ) is the ratio of length to resonant length,
l(x; f ) =  1 v(x)=2 = c0 1 v(x)=2f is the resonant length. In
this way, the calculation of the equivalent slot admittance is reduced to
the calculation of three single variable functions g (x), v (x), and h(y ).
Commercial full-wave simulator package HFSS is used to extract g (x),
v(x), and h(y) of the isolated longitudinal slot. In our work, slot width
is 0.18 mm and SIW width a is 2.56 mm. Fig. 2(a) and (b) show g (x=a)
and v (x=a) for a discrete number of relative offsets x=a in the range
0.03–0.1. Curve fitting has been applied to approximate g (x=a) and
v(x=a) in a continuum which can be directly used in the design of the
slot array by the classical iteration procedure [13]. For each offset, the
function h(y ) as shown in Fig. 2(c) has also been extracted for y in
the range 0.82–1.18. A table-look method for h(y ) is used in the de-
sign procedure of the slot array. It is clear that h1 (y ) and h2 (y ) rapidly
change with the change of y around the matching point y = 1, which
shows that the bandwidth of the SIW slot array is smaller than the band-
width of conventional rectangular waveguide slot array [14].

B. Design of Antenna Array

Based on the classical pattern synthesis procedure, the excitation
voltage of slots can be obtained by using Taylor distribution for H-plane
pattern with 25 dB first side lobe level and uniform distribution for
E-plane pattern. Elliott’s method [13] is used to obtain the length and
offset of each slot for a given aperture distribution by considering the
internal and external mutual couplings. In this method, active input
admittance Y a of each radiating SIW includes both self admittance
and mutual coupling effects with the remaining slots. A set of initial Fig. 2. (a) g (x), (b) v (x), and (c) h(y ), of isolated longitudinal slot with slot
width 0.18 mm in the broad wall of SIW with width of 2.56 mm.
values for slot lengths and offsets are assumed, and the mutual cou-
pling between slots is estimated according to the required slot voltage
distribution. An optimization routine is then used to identify a new set
of slot lengths and offsets such that all the slots are resonant and the length due to the over-etching and rectangular-end slot will be changed
matching conditions are satisfied for each subarray. Afterwards, a new to rounded-end slot in the etching process. Fig. 5 shows the simulated
set of mutual coupling terms are evaluated again. The procedure is iter- radiation pattern.
ated until a convergence is reached and the final slot lengths and offsets
C. Design of Feeding Network
are obtained.
As for the SIW slot array, the slot offset in SIW may be very small A 12-way power divider similar to that in [2] is used to feed the
due to the dielectric-filling and height-reduced effects of SIW. There- radiating SIWs. With consideration on the symmetry of feeding
fore, a fine-tuning procedure may be needed to modify the slot length network, the feeding network shown in Fig. 3(a) consists of one
and slot offset obtained by using the Elliot’s method. Some practical CBCPW-to-SIW transition, SIW bends and five SIW T-junctions. The
design aspects are considered in this work, for example, slot width and method presented in [15] is used to accurately design the transition
2128 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JUNE 2010

Fig. 3. (a) Configuration, (b) simulated frequency characteristics, of feeding

network.

Fig. 5. (a) Experimental setup, (b) simulated and measured radiation patterns
in both E-plane and H-Plane at 60.5 GHz.

the spurious radiation. In this work, the CBCPW slots are etched on
the same side as the radiating slots to facilitate measurements. For
the design of T-junctions, the size of coupling post-wall window is
determined by the power dividing ratio while the position of metalized
via hole is used to obtain good input matching. The adjacent radiating
SIWs are spaced by a half guided wavelength in the feeding SIW.
Fig. 4. Photograph and measured reflection coefficient of the proposed Therefore, the radiating SIWs are excited with alternating-phase of 180
antenna. degree by an incident travelling wave from the input port. Finally, the
overall feeding network is analyzed and optimized to compensate the
mutual coupling effect from adjacent discontinuities. Fig. 3(b) depicts
between 50- CBCPW and SIW. Usually, the slots in the CBCPW the simulated frequency characteristics of the overall feeding network.
and transition structure should be placed on the opposite side to reduce Over the simulation frequency band, the magnitude difference of the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JUNE 2010 2129

[2] M. Ando and J. Hirokawa, “High-gain and high-efficiency single-

layer slotted waveguide array in 60 GHz band,” in Proc. 11th
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[3] Y. P. Zhang, M. Sun, and L. H. Guo, “On-chip antennas for 60-GHz
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[5] M. Ando and J. Hirokawa, “System integration of planar slot array
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while the input reflection of the feeding network is better than 18 dB.
[9] P. Chen, W. Hong, Z. Kuai, and J. Xu, “A double layer substrate in-
The phase difference of the input power between adjacent radiating
SIWs is within the range of 180 6 15 degree over the simulation
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array antenna. strate integrated waveguides (SIW) in a flexible printed circuit board,”
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III. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT
cations,” in Proc. 39th Eur. Microw. Conf. Symp., Roma, Italy, 2009,
The proposed antenna array was implemented by using linear ar- pp. 417–420.
[12] R. J. Stegen, “Slot radiators and arrays at X-band,” IEEE Trans. An-
rays of metallized via hole having the diameter of 0.3 mm and the tennas Propag., vol. AP-1, pp. 62–64, Feb. 1952.
center-to-center pitch of 0.6 mm, which can be made with our labora- [13] R. S. Elliott, “An improved design procedure for small arrays of shunt
tory’s standard PCB process. The photograph of the developed antenna slots,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-31, pp. 48–53, Jan.
is displayed in Fig. 4. Anritsu 37397C vector network analyzer and An- 1983.
ritsu Wiltron 3680 V test fixture are used to measure the reflection co- [14] R. S. Elliott, Antenna Theory and Design. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003,
ch. 8.
efficient that is depicted in Fig. 4. The measured bandwidth for 10 dB
[15] X.-P. Chen and K. Wu, “Low-loss ultra-wideband transition between
return loss is 2.5 GHz from 59.3 GHz to 61.8 GHz. Fig. 5 shows the conductor-backed coplanar waveguide and substrate integrated wave-
experimental setup for the measurement of radiation patterns, and the guide,” presented at the IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp., Boston, MA,
measured and simulated E-plane and H-plane patterns which very well Jun. 7–12, 2009.
agree with each other. Due to the restriction of absorbers surrounding
the antenna under test, the measurement was operated in the range from
050 degree to 50 degree. The measured side lobe level is better than
15 dB in the E-plane while better than 26 dB in the H-Plane. The gain
shown in Fig. 6 was calculated from the Friis transmission equation for
different frequency points. The maximum gain is about 22 dBi, which
corresponds to the efficiency of about 68% estimated from the gain and
directivity.

IV. CONCLUSION
Planar antenna array based on the substrate integrated waveguide
(SIW) scheme is designed and realized on a standard dielectric sub-
strate by a low cost PCB process. Simulated and measured results show
that the proposed antenna has good efficiency and side lobe level, and
it can be used as a potential candidate for 60-GHz-band applications at
low cost.

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