Perpendicular-Corporate Feed in a Four-Layer Circularly-Polarized Parallel-Plate Slot Array

Abstract

This paper presents a design for the perpendicular-corporate feed in a four-layer circularly-polarized parallel-plate slot array antenna. We place a dielectric layer with adequate permittivity in the region between the coupling-aperture and the radiating-slot layers to remove x-shaped cavity walls completely in the radiating part of a conventional planar corporate-feed waveguide slot array antenna. To address fabrication constraints, the dielectric layer consists of PTFE and air. It excites a strong standing wave in the region and so provides 2×2-element subarrays with uniform excitation. None of the slot layers are in electrical contact due to air gaps between the slot layers. The four-layer structure with apertures for circular polarization contributes to wideband design for axial ratios because of the eigenmodes in the desired band. We realize an 11.9 % bandwidth for axial ratios of less than 3.0 dB as confirmed by measurements in the 60 GHz band. At the design frequency, the measured realized gain is 32.7 dBi with an antenna efficiency of 75.5 %.