Circularly Polarized Series Array and MIMO Application for Sub-Millimeter Wave/Terahertz Band

Abstract

This article presents a compact, planar, and circularly polarized array antenna operating in the W-band (84.5–110 GHz), with all its prototypes fabricated using a low-cost, traditional, microwave printed circuit board composed of Rogers RT/duroid 5880 (ε_r = 2.2, tanδ = 0.009). The final design that was fabricated and measured was a 4 × 4 array antenna having an overall size of 9 mm × 20 mm × 0.254 mm that used series feeding to reduce its sidelobes. Measurements of the 4 × 4 patch antenna array showed approximately 6.9% 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth along with 15.2 dBi maximum right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) antenna gain at 100 GHz. The array antenna yielded RHCP radiation characterized by a low profile, low cross-polarization levels (<−25 dB), low sidelobe levels (≤−10 dB), and high radiation efficiency (>91%). Additionally, a two-port MIMO antenna system was investigated by considering side-by-side and front-tofront configurations, both of which achieved good isolation and considerable envelope correlation coefficient and diversity gain values. Therefore, the proposed series array and MIMO antennas can be reasonable candidates for 6G applications of the sub-THz band (100– 110 GHz) in ultra-high-speed wireless and satellite communication systems.