A Millimeter-Wave Antipodal Linearly Tapered Slot Antenna Array for 5G Wireless Communication

Abstract

This paper presents an antipodal linearly tapered slot antenna (ALTSA) array with the newly emerging substrate-integrated coaxial line (SICL) technology. Each element of the proposed array consists of two vertically stacked antipodal tapered slot antennas (TSA) with the inner conductor of a SICL as the shared fin. The vertical symmetry of this radiating element structure significantly suppresses the cross-polarization level. By employing a SICL-based power splitter with differential outputs, a two-element array with horizontal symmetry is formed. With the inner conductors of two parallel SICLs combined as the flaring metal shared by adjacent tapered slots, the main beam squint is effectively suppressed. Experimental results show an actual −10-dB impedance bandwidth (BW) of 24.5∼34.4 GHz, and the realized gain range measured is 16.1∼18.7 dBi. The cross-polarization levels are −39.4 dB/−40.7 dB at 30 GHz for the E-/H-planes. The measured results agree well with the simulated data which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed SICL-based ALTSA scheme in the potential 5 G·millimeter-wave (mmWave) applications.