A Wide-Angle Scanning Switched-Beam Antenna System in LTCC Technology with High Beam Crossing Levels for V-band Communications

Wide-angle coverage, fine angular resolution and low-power consumption are key characteristics of millimeterwave (mm-wave) short-range wireless systems, such as access points in fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks and automotive radars. In this paper, we present a 60-GHz switched-beam antenna system addressing all these requirements. It consists of two identical parallel-fed arrays of 8 slots, each fed by a passive pillbox beamformer. A switch network comprising four singlepole- multiple-throw (SPnT) switches excites one of the two arrays at a time and selects the radiated beam. The whole system is fully-integrated in a multilayer low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) module. The antenna covers a scan range of about ±39° in one plane using eleven beams, between 57 GHz and 66 GHz. The proposed architecture enables the simultaneous achievement of continuous coverage (beam crossover levels of about -3 dB) and of low sidelobe levels (SLLs). Dedicated numerical tools are used for a preliminary design of the antenna. The design procedure, the technological development and the experimental results are discussed in detail