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This communication presents a low-profile wideband and high-gain patch antenna array using low-temperature cofired ceramics (LTCCs) fabrication technique for 60 GHz applications. A coupled feeding scheme is adopted so that the antenna achieves wide impedance bandwidth that covers the entire 60 GHz license-free band with a height of only 0.384 mm (four tape layers). The shorting via connecting the upper patch and ground achieves the function of a virtual ac ground plane of differential feeding. This enables the antenna element to achieve good radiation performances, including stable gain (variation less than 1 dB) and a symmetrical beam with low cross-polarization over the entire frequency band. The performances of the antenna element are comparable to that of the differential-driven patch antenna while the complex differential feeding network is not required. Furthermore, the proposed antenna element with simple and easy-to-integrate geometry is successfully extended to a $4 \times 4$ antenna array using a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW)-based feeding network. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidth of the array covers the 60 GHz license-free band. The maximum gain can reach 16.7 dBi and the radiation performances are very stable over the operating frequency band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new single-ended-fed planar aperture antennas (SPAAs) using low-temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) process technology. The SPAA element is proposed first, which not only inherits the merits of the aperture antennas including high gain and wide bandwidth but also exhibits advantages of low profile and compact size. The aperture is excited by a cross-shaped patch, and a loop-shaped balun structure placed below the patch is introduced to convert the single-ended signal into differential one to drive the patch. In this way, the energy can propagate on the patch in a traveling waveform and illuminate the aperture with uniform E-field distributions. Therefore, the antenna achieves good electrical and radiation performances, which are comparable to its balanced-fed counterparts, while processing a simplified structure. Measured results demonstrate that the impedance bandwidth of the antenna covers the 60 GHz license-free band (57–64 GHz), and the maximum gain can reach 11.5 dBi with a cavity area of only about 27 mm2. Furthermore, the element is successfully extended to a $4\,\,\times \,\,4$ element array using a substrate-integrated-waveguide based feeding network to further increase the gain up to 20.4 dBi. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidth of the array is from 57.5 to 65.7 GHz and the radiation performances are very stable over the operating frequency band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This communication presents a new design of a quadri-polarization-agile aperture-coupled patch antenna array for 60 GHz applications. Four polarization states, namely, vertical linear polarization, horizontal linear polarization, left-hand circular polarization (LHCP), and right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) can be flexibly reconfigured by dynamically switching the excitation of the corresponding port. More importantly, as the LP and CP radiations are achieved by using differential feeding and sequential-rotation feeding, respectively, the array exhibits wide impedance and axial ratio (AR) bandwidths, high polarization purity as well as symmetrical pattern with the main beam fixed at boresight. The −10 dB impedance bandwidths are better than 11.6% (57–64 GHz) for the four polarization states. The measured AR bandwidths are from 58 to more than 64 GHz for both the LHCP and RHCP. The good radiation performance together with the quadri-polarization-agile capability of this new array, as demonstrated in the communication, underlines its suitability for the future 5G communication systems, especially in a multipath propagation environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This communication presents a new kind of substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) slot antenna array with 1-D and 2-D monopulse radiation patterns. First, a new SIW magic-tee is developed, which exhibits a wide phase/amplitude balance bandwidth. Then, the magic-tee is extended to a new comparator which is used to feed the antenna with 2-D monopulse radiation pattern. Based on the proposed magic-tee and the comparator, 1-D and 2-D monopulse slot antenna arrays with $4\times 4$ elements are designed and measured, respectively. The experimental results show that the arrays exhibit good monopulse performance. More importantly, compared with their former counterparts, the monopulse performance of the arrays exhibits merely slight degradation over a much wider bandwidth due to the wide phase/ amplitude balance bandwidth that the comparators achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This communication presents new designs of dual-circularly polarized (CP) planar aperture antenna and array for 60 GHz applications. First, a four-port planar aperture antenna with its feeding network is developed that exhibits wide impedance bandwidth, dual-CP radiation as well as high gain. Then, based on the proposed antenna, a new scheme of building a dual-CP array is proposed. With this new scheme that combines the power splitting network and series feeding method, four sequentially fed antenna elements are successfully combined to form a CP radiation array. The experimental results show that the −10 dB impedance bandwidths of the antenna and the array are more than 18.2% (55–66 GHz). While the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidths are from 54.2 to 64.3 GHz (17.2%) for the antenna and from 54.8 to 65 GHz (17%) for the array. The maximum gains achieved are 13.7 and 17.85 dBic for the antenna and array, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]