Electromagnetic modeling and design of broadband spatial power combiners

In this paper we present a spatial power combining architecture consisting of several interacting printed antenna arrays placed at dielectric interfaces in multilayered waveguide. Previously used narrowband resonant patch and slot antennas are replaced by tapered meander slot antennas and their modifications, in order to increase the frequency bandwidth and efficiency of the system and provide operation in multiple band regimes. The full-wave analysis of the interacting antenna modules is based on the integral equation formulation for induced electric and magnetic surface current density discretized via the method of moments. In this formulation, magnetic potential dyadic Green's functions are obtained for a multilayered rectangular waveguide. Numerical results for meander line configurations show significant advantages in scattering characteristics in comparison to traditionally used rectangular slot antennas.