STACKED PATCH EXCITED HORN

ANTENNA AT 94 GHz
Rownak Shireen, T. Hwang, Shouyuan Shi, and
Dennis W. Prather
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
Delaware, Newark, DE 19716; Corresponding author:
[email protected]

Received 10 December 2007

ABSTRACT: This article presents wideband transition from coplanar

waveguide (CPW) to horn antenna (CPWHA) based on slot-coupled
stacked patch antenna technique. Multiple patches are used to excite the
fundamental mode into the rectangular waveguide. The antenna pro-
vides an efficient solution to vertical integration with optoelectronic de-
vices on lithium niobate (LN) for the applications of millimeter-wave
(mmW) to optical signal processing. The design is optimized using 3D
finite element method (FEM) software HFSS. For ⫺10 dB return loss,
30% bandwidth is achieved centered at 94 GHz. The return loss and
far-field radiation pattern of fabricated CPWHA are measured and has
been found in very good agreement with the simulated results. © 2008
Figure 6 Simulated and measured radiation patterns of Ka-band antenna Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 2071–2074,
at 35 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.
available at www.interscience.wiley.com] com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23562

Key words: CPW; stacked patch; horn antenna; mmW

design method can equally be applicable for the design of other

wideband antennas for phased arrays and power combining as well 1. INTRODUCTION
as millimeter-wave imaging systems. Electromagnetic spectrum in the millimeter-wave (mmW) range
has recently become a popular topic of investigation because of its
unique property of high transmission through atmospheric obscur-
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ance like clouds, smoke, and thin dielectrics. As such, mmW can
be used in imaging for spectroscopy, low visibility conditions, and
This work was supported by the National Fusion Research Center.
security measures. A novel detection technique based on the elec-
tro-optic conversion of mmW energy into sidebands of an optical
carrier was introduced in [1]. Two of the key components of this
REFERENCES detection technique are electro-optic modulator and high-gain an-
1. A.A. Eldek, Ultrawideband double rhombus antenna with stable radia- tenna to capture mmW radiation and upconvert to optical domain
tion patterns for phased array applications, IEEE Trans Antennas for signal processing. The focus of this article is to design an
Propag 55 (2007), 84 –91. antenna that will meet the specific requirements of imaging appli-
2. Y. Qian, W.R. Deal, N. Kaneda, and T. Itoh, Microstrip fed quasi-Yagi cations.
antenna with broadband characteristics, Electron Lett 34 (1998), 2194 – The modulators with operational bandwidth up to 100 GHz are
2196. typically based on coplanar waveguide (CPW) structure patterned
3. N. Kaneda, W.R. Deal, Y. Qian, R. Waterhouse, and T. Itoh, A broad- on the electro-optic material LN. To simplify integration with
band planar quasi-Yagi antenna, IEEE Trans Antennas Propag 50 modulator CPW-fed antenna is chosen for the design. Horn an-
(2002), 1158 –1160. tenna is used to improve the gain of the imaging system. Although
4. N.I. Dib, R.N. Simons, and L.P.B. Katehi, New uniplanar transitions for
the optoelectronic circuit is based on planar fabrication technol-
circuit and antenna applications, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech
ogy, metallic waveguide is needed to feed the horn antenna.
43 (1995), 2868 –2873.
Hence, transition from CPW to rectangular waveguide is critical
5. Y. Qian and T. Itoh, A broadband uniplanar microstrip-to-CPS transi-
tion, in Proceedings of Asia Pacific Microwave Conference Digest, for efficient integration especially in the mmW frequency range.
1997, Hong Kong, China, pp. 609 – 612. Several CPW to waveguide transitions were reported in the
6. Y.G. Kim, Y.G. Kim, D.S. Woo, K.W. Kim, and Y.K. Cho, A new past. The transitions using tapered fin-line [2], slotline probe [3], or
ultra-wideband microstrip-to-CPS transition, IEEE MTT-S Interna- in-line transition using rectangular probe [4] provide reasonably
tional Microwave Symposium, Honolulu, HI, 2007, pp. 1563–1566. good characteristics but they all require truncation of the planar
7. W.L. Stutzman and G.A. Thiele, Antenna theory and design, Wiley, circuits. These transitions are not suitable for antenna array con-
New York, 1998. figuration from the fabrication and integration points of view. The
design presented in [5] is compact but has very narrow operation
© 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. bandwidth, which is not sufficient for highly sensitive mmW
detection. In this article, a novel transition from CPW to horn
antenna is proposed for integration with mmW/optical receiver
circuit. The design is based on slot coupling and stacked patch
antenna technique to enhance impedance bandwidth.

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 50, No. 8, August 2008 2071
2. ANTENNA DESIGN
As we know, a single-slot coupled patch antenna gives ⫺10 dB
return loss bandwidth of 5–10%, which significantly reduces the
overall system bandwidth. To overcome this problem, multiple
patches are used to achieve the desired working bandwidth. The
resonance from the two patches is partly overlapped by careful
designing and thus broadband is achieved. The coupling of the two
patches generates two new resonances, one below and one above
the former independent ones.
The configuration of a CPW fed stacked patch with a horn
antenna is shown in Figure 1. The antenna consists of a CPW to
waveguide transition with two patches that offers wide bandwidth
and a high-gain horn antenna. The signal and gap width of CPW
are chosen to give 50-⍀ impedance on an anisotropic z-cut LN
substrate. Thick electrodes are used to reduce the conductor loss.
A thin layer of SiO2 is introduced between CPW and LN substrate
to lower the microwave index and thus help in minimizing the
electrical loss, which could occur due to phase match mode cou-
pling between the CPW mode and the off axis substrate modes.
The mmW energy is coupled to the patch through a square slot Figure 2 Simulated radiation pattern of stacked patch antenna at 94 GHz
loop placed at the end of CPW. The patches and the slot loop are
centered with respect to each other. Fundamental TE10 mode is
excited by the radiated field of patch antennas and also by the the impedance matching, whereas the length and the flare angle of
surface wave mode of the antenna substrates placed inside the the horn determine the radiation pattern [6].
waveguide. With this specific geometry, mmW power is trans-
ferred efficiently from the CPW to the waveguide. The waveguide 3. SIMULATION SETUP
gradually takes the form of a square horn antenna to match The objective of the simulations is to design and optimize the
impedance of the waveguide to that of free space. The flare angle performance of CPWHA in terms of patch sizes, spacing between
is adjusted to obtain required narrow beamwidth pattern to reduce the patches, length and cross section of rectangular waveguide, and
interference from the adjacent array elements. In the CPW to horn antenna. The antenna is modeled in three steps. At first, the
waveguide transition, its location in the horn are responsible for top and bottom patch sizes are varied to optimize the two coupling
effects: one between the slot loop and the bottom patch and the
other between the two patches. Then the transmission character-
istics of CPW to waveguide transition are studied for different
waveguide dimensions. Lastly, the horn antenna is designed to
achieve the desired directivity.
The performance of the stacked patch antenna depends on the
relative permittivity and thickness of the patch substrates. The
substrate heights of the lower and upper patch antennas, h1 ⫽ 127
␮m and h2 ⫽ 127 ␮m, are used for all the parametric analyses.
Low dielectric constant material (␧r ⫽ 2.2) is chosen for the
antenna substrates for better radiation efficiency. The optimum
return loss bandwidth is achieved by varying the upper and lower
patch sizes as well as the square slot loop. Slot aperture excitation
is dominated by magnetic coupling mechanism. Best coupling is
achieved through a slot placed near the center of the bottom patch
where the magnetic field is maximum for first radiating mode
TM10. The patch is mainly excited by the loop edges parallel to the
radiating sides [7]. Figure 2 shows the simulated radiation pattern
from the two patches. The gain of the stacked patches is 5.5 dB
with front to back ratio of 9 dB. To further improve the directivity
of the stacked patches, horn is incorporated in the design. The horn
antenna is composed of two sections: rectangular waveguide and
slant horn. The waveguide plays an important role of matching
impedance between the horn and the stacked patches. The length
and the cross section of waveguide are adjusted to have minimum
insertion loss from CPW to waveguide transitions. At first, the
Figure 1 Configuration of a stacked patch fed horn antenna: (i) horn aperture of the waveguide is varied for a fixed waveguide length hg
antenna (lh ⫽ 8 mm, wh ⫽ 8 mm, hh ⫽ 8 mm); (ii) waveguide (lg ⫽ wg ⫽
⫽ 0.79 mm, which is about a quarter of a wavelength at center
2.2 mm, hg ⫽ 0.85 mm); (iii) top patch (lu ⫽ wu ⫽ 835 ␮m); (iv) patch
substrate 1 (␧r ⫽ 2.2, tan ␦ ⫽ 0.0009, h1 ⫽ 127 ␮m); (v) bottom patch (ll ⫽
frequency. The minimum insertion loss is obtained for aperture
wl ⫽ 830 ␮m); (vi) patch substrate 2 (␧r ⫽ 2.2, tan ␦ ⫽ 0.0009, h2 ⫽ 127 size of 2.2 mm ⫻ 2.2 mm. Next the influence of waveguide length
␮m); (vii) coupling slot (ls ⫽ ws ⫽ 310 ␮m); (viii) CPW (w ⫽ 8 ␮m, g ⫽ is observed by keeping the aperture size fixed. The optimized
25 ␮m); (ix) LN substrate (␧x ⫽ ␧y ⫽ 45, ␧z ⫽ 28, tan ␦ ⫽ 0.004, h3 ⫽ 300 length is found to be 0.85 mm. For horn antenna design, the length
␮m) and the aperture are controlled to improve the antenna directivity.

2072 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 50, No. 8, August 2008 DOI 10.1002/mop
 Figure 4 Simulated and measured return loss of CPWHA

The transition bandwidth from CPW to waveguide is 80 –110

GHz for ⫺10 dB return loss as shown in Figure 4. Two resonances
located at 88 and 103 GHz can be clearly observed. With the
merged resonant peaks, the overall operation bandwidth is ex-
Figure 3 Fabricated (a) loop antenna, (b) stacked patch antenna on the panded up to 30%. We can notice that the resonance peak from the
loop, and (c)stacked patch antenna integrated with the horn two patches is slightly shifted from the simulated results due to
misalignment of the two patches. The radiation pattern of CPWHA
4. FABRICATION is measured in both E-plane and H-plane with goniometer (Figure
5). The angular movement of the goniometer is restricted to the
To validate the computed performance, a prototype of the pro-
vertical plane and the range is from ⫹45° to ⫺45°. The gain of the
posed design is fabricated (Figure 3). At first, 1-␮m thick SiO2
horn antenna is found to be 12 dB with half-power beamwidth
buffer layer is deposited by employing PECVD (plasma enhanced
(HPBW) around ⫾13° in both planes.
chemical vapor deposition) on a 300-␮m thick LN substrate. The
conducting material for the electrode is chosen to be gold. To
6. CONCLUSIONS
obtain good adherence on the SiO2 layer a titanium layer is
evaporated before the gold seed layer. SU-8 photoresist is used to A high-gain and wide bandwidth antenna centered at 94 GHz has
form the template for CPW with slot loop pattern using standard been proposed using stacked patch excited horn. Simulated and
photolithography technique. Then 20-␮m thick electroplated gold experimental results are provided to prove the concept. For a return
electrodes are grown at a rate of 2.5 ␮m/h. After electroplating, the loss of ⫺10 dB, about 30% bandwidth is achieved for CPWHA.
photoresist is stripped using piranha solution (H2SO4: H2O2, 3:1). The horn antenna improved gain of the stacked patch by 6.5 dB.
Titanium and gold seed layers are removed using their respective This transition is optimally compatible with extended integrated
wet etchants. circuits, as the metal waveguide structure is situated only at one
Both patches are etched on Duroid 5880 substrates. Then two side of the transmission line circuit.
substrates are attached together by applying a very thin layer of
glue. Alignment marks are used to simplify the placement of the
patch substrates with respect to the slot pattern on LN. The patch
substrates have the same dimension as the waveguide aperture so
that they can be fitted into the waveguide. Horn with the rectan-
gular waveguide section is CNC (computer numerical control)
machined from a single copper block. A small window is cut from
the waveguide to prevent shortening of CPW signal and ground
electrodes. The length of the waveguide section is made longer
than the computed value to compensate for the antenna substrate
heights.

5. MEASURMENT
The experimental setup is calibrated in two steps. To measure the
return loss of the antenna, G-S-G probe is calibrated at the tip by
using the on-wafer short, open, and load standards supplied by the
probe manufacturer. The gain is calibrated with a known standard
gain horn antenna. Because the horn antenna has a WR10
waveguide connector, the additional loss through the probe has to
be taken into account to achieve accurate gain calibration at the
probe tip. Figure 5 Radiation pattern of CPWHA at 94 GHz

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 50, No. 8, August 2008 2073
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1. C.A. Schuetz, J. Murakowski, G.J. Schneider, and D.W. Prather, Ra-
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© 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Figure 1 Schematic of (a) Conventional RF switch and (b) Proposed RF
switch

A DUAL-BAND RF SWITCH USING dual-band systems are employed in these applications to enhance the
COMPOSITE RIGHT/LEFT-HANDED reliability. Therefore, the dual-band RF switch becomes key compo-
TRANSMISSION LINES AND PIN nent in the front end of wireless systems. A RF switch is an electrical
DIODES component for opening and closing the connection of a circuit or for
changing of a circuit device. In the case of practical switch as a
Dong-Ryul Shin,1 JeongPyo Kim,2 ChangHyun Park,1 and multiple PIN diodes which enhance the electrical performance using
Wonmo Seong1
1 the conventional transmission-line (TL) structure are widely used to
EMW Antenna Co., Ltd, R&D Center, Deagu, South Korea;
Corresponding author: [email protected] achieve high isolation [1, 2]. Figure 1(a) shows a conventional RF
2
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Hanyang switch based on type II; filter structure. However, the switch based on
University, Korea conventional TL structure was a key problem for dual-band config-
uration due to the distributed characteristics of the transmission line,
Received 16 December 2007 which were referred to as right-handed (RH) TL. For example, ␭/4
RH open-stubs is only operated for band-stopping at a fundamental
ABSTRACT: A dual-band RF switch that utilizes composite right/left frequency and at its odd harmonics. This problem can be overcome by
handed (CRLH) transmissions-lines(TLs) and PIN diodes is proposed. implementing some components that is consisted of composite right/
The design method of RF switch is based on the phase characteristic of left-handed (CRLH) TL.
the CRLH-TL, which can be adjusted arbitrary, and employed conven- There has been an increasing interest in development of RF/
tional type-II; filter structure. The use of multiple PIN diodes as switch- Microwave component using CRLH TLs [3, 4]. The CRLH TL is
ing element offers prominent performance such as low insertion loss,
meta-structured TL composed of unit cell with RH TL and left-
low power consumption, and high isolation. Theoretical performance of
RF switch is verified through the circuit simulations and the measure-
ment of a fabricated prototype at 0.8 GHz and 1.6 GHz. © 2008 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 2074 –2077, 2008;
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).
DOI 10.1002/mop.23591

Key words: switch; dual-band; composite right/left-handed transmission

line

1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the dual-band RF components have become important
for wireless communication. For example, the global systems for
mobile communication operate at both 900 and 1800 MHz and the Figure 2 Equationuivalent circuit model of the CRLH-TL

2074 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 50, No. 8, August 2008 DOI 10.1002/mop