Low cost 60 GHz new thin pyralux membrane antennas FED by substrate integrated waveguide

International audienceA low cost technology based on FR4 and thin flexible Pyralux substrate to develop membrane antennas/array with high efficiency and wide bandwidth for high speed V-band communication systems is proposed in this paper. A new low cost thin Pyralux substrate with a thickness of 75 μm, relative permittivity of εr = 2.4 and tanδ = 0.002 is used. First we developed the known classical aperture coupled antennas based on FR4 and pyralux substrate to validate this technology. The simulated and measured antenna radiation parameters for a single patch, 1x4 array of patches using aperture coupled technology give good results in terms of S11 bandwidth, gain and radiation pattern. But the back radiation is found to be high due to some radiation from the slot and the feeding microstrip line. Measurements of the antennas show approximately 9.7% and 10.8% impedance bandwidth (S11= -10 dB) with a maximum gain of 7.6 dBi and 12.4 dBi around 60 GHz, respectively. In order to reduce the back radiation, we developed slot coupled antennas with substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. Measurements show a 10 % and 7.5 % impedance bandwidth with a maximum antenna gain of 7.9 dBi and 12.7 dBi around 60 GHz for SIW single patch and 1 x 4 array antenna, respectively. The efficiency in this case is found to be very good due to very low back radiation. The measured results are in good agreement with the numerical simulations. The new thin substrate used for making the antenna helps easy integration with millimeter wave components and circuits