PLA-based 3D Printed Quad-ridged Horn Antenna for Tomography Application

In order to improve the accuracy of object detection tomography application requires a wideband antenna and dual polarization. A quad-ridged horn antenna is one of antenna types which have some characteristics satisfying the required specification. In this paper, the development of 3D printed quad-ridged horn antenna based on polylactid-acid (PLA) with metal conductive coating is proposed for tomography application. Some advantages of using 3D printing technology for the proposed antenna are light-weight, low-cost, and easy in fabrication. The ridge profile applied for the proposed antenna is a quadratic ridge which has been proven in bandwidth enhancement toward a lower operating frequency. It shows that the realized 3D printed QRHA has the weight lighter more than 65% compared to the computerized numerically controlled (CNC) based fabricated antenna. From the characterization result, the realized 3D printed QRHA yields the -10 dB working bandwidth in the frequency range of 3.5-11.4 GHz.