This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2015.2440334, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters

Broadband single-layer slotted array antenna in

SIW technology
D. Mencarelli, A. Morini, F. Prudenzano, G. Venanzoni, F. Bigelli, O. Losito, and M. Farina

 from SIW discontinuities in order to reduce asymmetries. In

Abstract—A squint-less slot-antenna array (2D), built on a addition, an inter-element spacing lower than the free-space
single substrate integrated waveguides (SIW), is shown. The wavelength is required to avoid the presence of grating lobes.
effort needed for designing a suitable feeding network in SIW The achievable gain is limited since antenna-directivity
technology is justified in view of obtaining lightweight, low increases linearly with the area of the array, but losses increase
profile and low-cost antennas for many applications, including exponentially with the length of the feeding network,
direct broadcast satellite. A proper definition of a “H”-shaped
depending on the loss tangent of the dielectric substrate. The
sub-array, made of four slot-pairs, is used to improve the input
matching over a wide band. This choice allows remarkable gain obtained in parallel-feeding antennas [16, 17], with
simplification of the fabrication process, as the slots are cut double layer configuration, is few dB higher [17] than what
directly in one of the metallic planes forming the SIW. obtained by us, at the price of a higher complexity. More
importantly, the higher gain is motivated by the use of a
Index Terms—Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW), planar substrate with lower dielectric-constant and lower losses: such
slot-antenna array, Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS). substrate would be hardly exploitable in a single layer
configuration, as we initially carefully verified, due to
I. INTRODUCTION geometric and spatial constrains.

S UBstrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology [1]

allows the fabrication of rectangular waveguides in
dielectric substrates, with the typical advantages of the planar
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The design of the array includes the coaxial-to-SIW transition,
technology, namely cost reduction, low profile, lightness, easy the power dividers forming the feeding network, and the
integration of passive and active devices, mass reduction and terminal radiating elements, represented by 4x2 sub-arrays of
manufacturing repeatability. radiating slots (Fig. 1).
With the above premises, the present design of a SIW planar
antenna [2,3] with high gain, squint-less main lobe, and very Metallic post
Slot
wide bandwidth (10.7-12.7 GHz), for Direct Broadcast
Satellite (DBS) and radar applications, is particularly
challenging. In comparison with standard slotted rectangular
waveguide (RWG) antenna-arrays [4], or with common
satellite dishes, the achievable gain and efficiency are
expected to be significantly lower, due to fabrication
tolerances and dielectric losses (if inexpensive materials are to L
be employed) [5-10]. In the literature, many other planar L
solutions, mostly employing microstrips and patches, have
been considered [11-15]. Their performance is typically Fig. 1. 4x2 sub-array, in the RWG approximation of the SIW. The
limited in terms of bandwidth or gain, and a trade-off of these spacing between different pair-slots is L=22 mm.
parameters is usually required.
Allocating the entire structure in a single-layer substrate is not The slots are cut in a copper layer of thickness 35 µm, over a
an easy task, as crossing of the constituent parts, i.e. feeding substrate (thickness 1.52 mm) made of Taconic RF-35: this
network and radiating elements, has to be avoided. The SIWs choice constitutes a compromise between cost and losses; the
must be wide enough to operate above cut-off with almost nominal tanδ of the material is 0.0019, with εr≈3.5.
linear dispersion, and the radiating slots should be far away In order to obtain good radiation over a large bandwidth, the
slots are paired in double-slot sub-systems. We started with a
single slot: its resonant length depends on its offset with
This project is funded by an Italian National project, PON01_01224/2, on
development of substrate integrated circuits (SIW) for ICT applications.
respect to the SIW center axis, as explained in [4]. The other
F. Prudenzano, O. Losito, G. Venanzoni are with the Politechnical slot is then placed along the axis of the SIW. The two slots
University of Bari, Bari, 70100, Italy (e-mail: [email protected], resonate at slightly different frequency: one of them, acting as
[email protected], [email protected]). F. Bigelli is with Somacis a “passive” element, is placed along the axis of the waveguide,
Group, Casterfidardo, 60022, Italy (e-mail: [email protected]). D.
whereas the second slot, the “active” element, is slightly
Mencarelli, A. Morini and M. Farina are with the Politechnical University of
Marche, Ancona, 60100, Italy (e-mail: [email protected], displaced. They have similar length, but their resonant
[email protected], [email protected]).

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2015.2440334, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters

frequency changes significantly with the offset from the broad 0

simulated 0
simulated
wall centerline [18, 19]. A metallic post, placed near each slot- measured
(d) measured

(c) -5
pair, acts as a reflection element, and enhances radiation.

Normalized power (dB)

Normalized power (dB)

-10
The largest antenna considered in this work is shown in Fig. 2: -10

it consists of 32x16 radiating slots (area=352x352 mm2);

-15
larger versions are currently being fabricated. The antenna is -20

optimized by tuning slot length and separation, accounting for -20

the inter-element coupling. -25

-30

Coaxial input -180 -90 0 90 180

-30
-180 -90 0 90 180
Angle (degrees) Angle (degrees)
Fig. 3. a) Fabricated SIW antenna, made of two 2 stacked sub-arrays;
b) Simulated (blue-dashed) and measured (green-solid) |S11|; c)
Simulated (solid-blue) and measured (green-dashed) H-plane
radiation pattern (11 GHz), d) Simulated (solid-blue) and measured
(green-dashed) E-plane radiation pattern (11 GHz).

The device, shown in Fig. 3(a), has been fabricated and tested.
Figure 3(b) reports a comparison between simulation and
measurement of |S11|. For 7 dB return loss, the antenna
bandwidth is large, about 20%. The radiation patterns, for both
E-plane (yz) and H-plane (xz), measured and simulated, are
reported in Fig. 3(c) and 3(d).

B. Analysis of an antenna with 32x16 slots.

The reflection of the 32x16 antenna (Nslot=512), shown in Fig.
2, is reported in Fig. 4: the solid and dashed curves refer to
simulated and measured reflections at the coaxial port. The
Fig. 2. A view to the [16x32] antenna: layout form the HFSS design simulation was performed using tanδ=0.003 because, actually,
project (top) and fabricated device (bottom). some independent measurements made on uniform SIW
waveguides, suggested that tanδ lies in the range [0.0022-
The simulation of such a large antenna is hardly feasible by 0.0038]. The agreement is good, considering that the RWGs
standard commercial solvers, so that independent simulations approximation of the SIWs may be not optimal for frequencies
of internal and external regions are needed [20]: the former is far from the center-band. In addition, the measurement is
fed by the coaxial-input and the slots, whereas the latter is affected by the connector, and by fabrication tolerances..
given by a half space fed by as many waveguides as the slots.
The internal region has been simulated by HFSS, whereas the
external region, including slot inter-couplings, is simulated
analytically. By definition, internal and external blocks are
interfaced through waveguides having the same cross-section
as the slots. Some simplifying assumptions are made: i) only
one waveguide mode for each slot (field strongly constrained
by the geometry), ii) infinite metallic slotted-plane in the
external simulation, iii) RWG approximation of the SIW.

III. EXPERIMENTS Fig. 4. Simulation (blue-dashed) and measurement (green-solid) of

the reflection coefficient of the 352x352 mm2 antenna. The bold blue
A. Analysis and measure of an antenna with 4x2 slots. curve is calculated with tanδ=0.0030, and the markers define a
As a preliminary example, we report on a SIW antenna made possible range for tanδ, i.e. [0.0030±0.0008].
of two 4x2 sub-arrays.
(a) (b)
The total gain of the antenna, G, is:
G( f ) dB  D( f ) dB  P( f ) dB
where f is the frequency, D is the ideal directivity, that is
z approximated by the directivity of a uniform antenna-aperture
of area A, i.e. D  4A / 2 (the actual field taper over the
array is not perfectly uniform, so, in that sense, this is an
y estimation), and P is the fraction of the input power outgoing
x from the slots:
2 Ima b *  ,
Nslot
P 
i 1
i i

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2015.2440334, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters

where ai and bi are the scattering coefficients of the IV. CONCLUSION

fundamental mode of the i-th slot, evanescent in the whole A planar slotted array in SIW technology has been shown,
frequency range, for the chosen slot sizes. Here, the slot made up on a single-layer substrate, featuring the frequency
modes are defined as the field distributions in the slots, whose band of DBS communications, from 10.7 GHz to 12.7 GHz.
sections are seen as the sections of rectangular waveguides The peculiarity of this work relies in the analysis of a very
perpendicular to the plane of the antenna. As it is shown in simple and thin antenna, made entirely of slotted SIWs, with a
Fig. 5, the simulated gain is 2÷3 dB higher than the measured particular choice of the radiating elements. The latter are given
one. This is likely due to the losses of the coaxial connector, to by “H”-shaped SIW-terminations: this choice allows
dielectric losses possibly higher than nominal ones, and, as enlargement of the bandwidth, and broadside radiation with
mentioned above, to the not perfectly uniform field taper. substantially squint-less main lobe.
Figure 6 shows the radiation pattern of the antenna, and
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