Wideband Ku-band antennas using multi-layer direct digital manufacturing

3D Printed Wideband Multilayered Dual-Polarized Stacked Patch Antenna With Integrated MMIC Switch

“…The fabricated antenna consists of a total of 13 dielectric and conductive layers. As desired, a 45% |S11|<−10 dB impedance bandwidth is achieved across the entire Ku-band (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) with >80% radiation efficiency. The manuscript is organized as follows: Section II presents the investigation of substrate thickness, infill ratio and infill direction to minimize the loss of the microstrip feed lines utilized in the antenna structure.…”

“…Stacked Patch Antenna with Integrated MMIC Switch exceeding 80% and 10 dB, respectively, across the Ku-band (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). The antenna should operate with excellent polarization purity and >25 dB isolation between feed ports.…”

“…To address the wide bandwidth and dualpolarization needs, an aperture stacked patch antenna fed with microstrip lines is selected for the design. As shown in [13], for antennas operating at lower frequency bands, the antenna substrates are formed from low-infill ratio ABS and their thicknesses are customized to maximize radiation efficiency and bandwidth. However, in contrast to existing literature, this manuscript also investigates the geometry of the microstrip feed lines for the first time to further maximize the radiation efficiency and minimize losses in potential phased array implementations.…”

“…To achieve 50 Ω characteristic impedance for the microstrip line over the substrate stack-up, line width is parametrically swept to achieve a return loss value exceeding 30 dB. In these simulations, conductivity of CB028 silver paste is taken as 1.65 MS/m [13]. Fig.…”

“…As frequency increases, it is expected that the current on the microstrip line will be more concentrated in the line edges and therefore the effect of edge roughness will be even more pronounced. Our work in [13,21] demonstrates this issue through microstrip line characterizations, however, microstrip lines were realized from 100% infill ratio substrates without substrate thickness vs. attenuation considerations. This manuscript demonstrates this effect experimentally with microstrip lines that utilize the 25% infill ratio substrate and optimized substrate thicknesses.…”