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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]