Siw Antenna
Siw Antenna
Siw Antenna
1, FEBRUARY 2009
93
I. INTRODUCTION
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Fig. 1. Steps in a photo-imageable process (a) printing (b) exposure (c) developing (d) firing.
Fig. 2. Steps in a waveguide integration process, printing (a) bottom wall (b)
side walls (c) top wall and radiating slots. (d) Cross-sectional view of the integrated waveguide on alumina substrate.
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HENRY et al.: MILLIMETER WAVE SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED WAVEGUIDE ANTENNAS: DESIGN AND FABRICATION ANALYSIS
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Fig. 4. Photographs of conductor surface to show (a) shrinkage after firing, (b)
and after optimizing the fabrication process.
Fig. 3. (a)(c) Photographs showing the quality and capability of the fabrication process under careful control of the processing parameters. (d) SEM picture
showing the shrunk conductor strip inside the trench after firing.
TABLE I
RATE OF SHRINKAGE ON CONDUCTORS, DIELECTRICS
AND CIRCUITS OF DIFFERENT GEOMETRIES
Fig. 5. The dielectric layer of thickness 60 m printed and dried without intermediate firing steps showing cracks at the corners after firing; (a) track corner;
(b) VIA corners.
to be refined for different layers, and for different circuit geometries. In the integration process described in this paper the
shrinkage in VIAs and trenches was compensated in the -direction by printing extra conductor layers. Correct compensation in the plane was achieved by increasing the exposure
time and decreasing the development time. To illustrate the effectiveness of this technique Fig. 4(a) shows the trenches filled
before compensation for shrinkage, and Fig. 4(b) shows the conductor-filled trenches after compensation.
In order to achieve the required degree of interlayer resolution, a Quintel Q7000 mask aligner was used. To achieve optimum resolution it was found that some care was needed in the
choice of alignment marks to ensure they were compatible with
the mask aligner being used.
b) Processing Time: In this study, 250 mesh stainless steel
screens were used to print the dielectric, giving a postfiring
thickness of around 15 m. The conductor thickness, using 325
mesh screens for printing, was around 8 m after firing. The
total inner height of the integrated waveguide shown in Fig. 2.
was 60 m. This was formed from four layers of dielectric.
In all, eight layers of conductor were needed, including trench
filling and compensating for shrinkage. Using this technique,
the time required to finish a layer was one day, the most time
consuming aspect being the firing and cooling in a single
chamber furnace. So integrating a waveguide section of 60 m
occupied around one and a half week. Hence, it was attractive
to try and save processing time by printing and drying a number
of layers and then co-firing in one step. Our experience was
that circuits would develop cracks at the corners after firing.
The results of an unsuccessful attempt to build a 60- m-thick
dielectric prior to firing are shown in Fig. 5, where significant
cracking is evident.
III. INTEGRATED ANTENNA DESIGNS
This section discusses the design, simulation and theoretical
analysis of two different antenna topologies operating around
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(1)
where
is the free space wavelength and
is the permittivity
of the dielectric.
2) Antenna Dimensions: The dielectric waveguide antenna
array with radiating slots was designed using conventional dielectric waveguide theory [13], [14]. The design was then simulated and optimised using 3-D electromagnetic simulation software HFSS to obtain maximum radiation. The optimized dimensions for a 2 3 slot array are shown in Fig. 7, where all dimensions are in millimeters. The simulation results are shown
in Fig. 8 for a representative SIW antenna; it should be noted
that the simulation was performed for at 76 GHz using Hybridas
HD1000 thick-film dielectric, whereas our SIW antennas were
Fig. 8. (a) HFSS model, (b) field pattern, (c) return loss (d) radiation pattern at
E-plane and H-plane, for the SIW antenna optimised for 76 GHz and obtained
from simulation.
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HENRY et al.: MILLIMETER WAVE SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED WAVEGUIDE ANTENNAS: DESIGN AND FABRICATION ANALYSIS
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2 3 antenna array (a) return loss (b) radiaFig. 13. Measured return loss of a back-to back folded waveguide transition.
Fig. 14. Folded Waveguide Antenna (a) return loss (b) radiation pattern.
Fig. 11. Design dimensions of a four slot folded waveguide antenna, all dimensions are in millimeters.
Fig. 12. Integrated folded waveguide antenna (a) top conductor layer, (b) intermediate conductor layer.
Since the antenna were fabricated using integrated waveguides, it was important to gain some insight into the practical
losses of the waveguide. To achieve this, waveguide lines of
different lengths, but with the same cross sections, were fabricated and the line loss measured using a vector network analyzer
(HP 8510 XF), which had previously been calibrated using an
on-wafer calibration kit. The ends of the wave-guide sections
were tapered to connect with the coplanar probing pads. Each
tapered section had an axial length of 2 mm. The return loss and
insertion loss of integrated waveguides of length 1.9 mm and
width 1.266 mm are plotted in Fig. 15.
The results show that the integrated waveguide structure, including the tapered sections, has relatively low insertion loss up
dB at the antenna design freto 100 GHz, with a value of
quency (74 GHz). The losses tend to increase with frequency
due to increase in dielectric loss and conductor surface losses.
The losses in the tapered feeds, and also the probe-circuit mismatch losses, were de-embedded by computing the difference
in the insertion losses of two wave-guide structures of different
lengths. After de-embedding, the magnitude of the loss in the
SIW was calculated and the loss is plotted as a function of frequency in Fig. 16. Fig. 17 shows the wave number and guided
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Fig. 18. Folded waveguide sections of different length for insertion loss measurement (dimensions in millimeters).
Fig. 15. S-parameters plotted for substrate integrated waveguide and a simple
microstrip line.
Fig. 19. The measured frequency response of three identical SIW antennas to
illustrate the repeatability of thick-film processing.
TABLE II
THREE-DIMENSIONAL TOLERANCES MEASURED ON THE CRITICAL DIMENSIONS
OF SIW AND SIW ANTENNAS AFTER PROCESS MODIFICATION
Fig. 17. The wave number ( ) and guided wavelength ( ) of a substrate integrated waveguide plotted against frequency.
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HENRY et al.: MILLIMETER WAVE SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED WAVEGUIDE ANTENNAS: DESIGN AND FABRICATION ANALYSIS
TABLE III
PERFORMANCE COMPARISON TABLE FOR SIW AND A CONVENTIONAL
METALLIC ANTENNA ARRAY AT 74 GHZ
also because of the small dimensions that were needed. A further benefit of the choice of an antenna was that there was performance data available in the literature [16] for antennas fabricated using other technologies, against which the performance
of the integrated substrate approach could be compared.
Obviously, it was important to obtain some indication of the
efficiency of the SIW antenna in comparison with the more conventional microstrip patch array at mm-wave frequencies. For
this efficiency analysis, the total loss (dielectric and conductor)
for a section of waveguide is compared to that of an equivalent
microstrip line. Direct comparisons are difficult, because microstrip interconnections normally have an impedance of 50 ,
whereas waveguide has a somewhat higher impedance However, if we compare microstrip having the same overall dimensions as the integrated waveguide, i.e., occupying the same substrate area, then we find that the microstrip has a loss around
50% higher than that of the integrated waveguide. Moreover,
for an array giving similar radiation performance the total area
th
of the substrate integrated waveguide antenna will be
of that occupied by a microstrip [16]. Therefore, the substrate
integrated waveguide structure will offer an advantage in terms
of reduced surface area and efficiency that will be significant for
highly integrated millimeter-wave circuits, where substrate area
is at a premium.
The three-slot substrate integrated waveguide antenna performance has been compared with that from a conventional
metallic air-filled waveguide antenna, as shown by the data
in Table III. In this table, the gain for a conventional metallic
wavguide antenna was calculated from [17] and the total loss
is calculated from [18]. The minimum physical area was calculated for both antennas, and for the SIW the physical area
% compared to the metallic waveguide
was reduced by
air-filled antennas.
VII. CONCLUSION
The results have demonstrated that photoimageable
thick-film technology is a viable approach for the fabrication of circuits working at high millimetre-wave frequencies,
offering both low-loss interconnections and the potential to
realise fine circuit geometries. The techniques of using the
technology to fabricate 3-D integrated waveguides within a
planar circuit proved successful, and led to the development
of a high performance, miniature antenna working at 74 GHz.
The technique could be extended to LTCC, which would permit
parallel processing of the layers and avoid the need for the time
consuming sequential processing of each layer.
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