A low‐profile planar end‐fire broadband antenna with wide beamwidth

Abstract

AbstractA low‐profile planar end‐fire broadband antenna with wide beamwidth is presented. The proposed antenna consists of a grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW), an antipodal dipole, and a pair of directors. A transition from the GCPW to the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) with tapered coupling slots is designed to achieve a wide impedance bandwidth. Wide beamwidths of the proposed antenna are realised through the antipodal dipole with bilaterally symmetrical sector arms. A pair of directors are symmetrically located on both sides of the sector arms to further widen the beamwidth. An antenna prototype operating at Ka band with a size of 2.18 λ0 × 0.77 λ0 × 0.06 λ0 (λ0 is the wavelength of the centre frequency) is fabricated based on the conventional printed circuit board process. The measurement results show that the reflection coefficient is lower than −12.5 dB in the frequency range of 32.2–37.0 GHz. At 35.5 GHz, the peak gain is 3.8 dBi, and the half‐power beamwidths (HPBWs) in E‐plane and H‐plane are 116° and 215°, respectively.