Printed Ridge Gap Waveguide Based Radome Antenna for K-Ka Applications

In this paper, PRGW based bow-tie aperture antenna loaded with radome structure is presented for K-KA applications. Five different radome configurations with different sizes are proposed, including single bow-tie shape, three layers of bow-tie, rectangular and hemispherical geometrical shapes. Three different substrate materials with relative dielectric constants of 2.94, 3.3 and 6.45 are implemented. Different thicknesses are used for different configurations for the sake of optimising the antenna gain. The structure is simulated based on Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) analysis; CST Microwave Studio and Finite Element Method(FEM); Ansoft HFSS for validation of the results. It is found that the radome structure of hemispherical geometrical shape with total radius 18.4 mm equally divided over the three layers; achieves maximum overall gain. It enhances the gain by 52% relative to the structure without radome. It operates from 26.5 GHz up to 33.4 GHz. It is clear that the proposed structure shows superior performance compared to its counter part in literature.