A high-gain gap waveguide-based 16 × 16 slot antenna array with low sidelobe level for mmwave applications

Davood Zarifi; Ali Sabbaghi Saber; Ashraf Uz Zaman

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-83283-w

A high-gain gap waveguide-based 16 × 16 slot antenna array with low sidelobe level for mmwave applications

Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 28;14(1):31458. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-83283-w.

Authors

Davood Zarifi^{1

2}, Ali Sabbaghi Saber³, Ashraf Uz Zaman⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran. davood.zarifi@pg.edu.pl.
² Department of Microwave and Antenna Engineering, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications, and Informatics, Gdańsk University of Technology, Gdańsk, 80-233, Poland. davood.zarifi@pg.edu.pl.
³ School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran.
⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Abstract

This study presents the design of a high-gain 16 × 16-slot antenna array with a low sidelobe level (SLL) using a tapered ridge gap waveguide feeding network for Ka-band applications. The proposed antenna element includes four cavity-backed slot antennas. A tapered feeding network is designed and utilized for unequal feeding of the radiating elements. Ridge gap waveguide technology is used to reduce the feeding network loss and achieve a low-loss array antenna. The feed layer of the proposed antenna is coupled to a standard rectangular waveguide (WR-28) using a proper transition. The measured results show an impedance bandwidth of more than 17% over the frequency range of 27.5-32.6 GHz covering one of the standard vehicle-to-satellite band (29.4-31.0 GHz) and 5G mmWave N261 band (27.5-28.35 GHz), a maximum gain of 28.9 dBi, and SLL lower than - 20 dB. Thanks to its high performance and desirable features, the proposed antenna shows potential for use in vehicular radar systems and high data rate mmWave communications.