A Perpendicular-Corporate-Feed Parallel-Plate Slot Array Antenna Based on H-Plane Groove Gap Waveguides With Interlaced Triangular Pins

This communication presents a perpendicular-corporate-fed slotted parallel-plate array antenna based on H-plane groove gap waveguides (GWs) with interlaced triangular pins. A novel groove GW using interleaved triangular pins is initially developed to enhance the space between the pins in the corporate-feed circuit and to mitigate antenna fabrication difficulties. It is also shown that the unit cell and H-plane groove GW with the proposed interleaved triangular pins offer a broad bandwidth. The T- and H-junctions with the interlaced triangular pins are designed to achieve improved performance. Slotted parallel plates are used in the radiating part to realize a more straightforward manufacturing. By introducing irises and stepped coupling slots in the feeding waveguide, the bandwidth of the
$2\times2$
parallel-slot subarray is significantly improved to 28.3% for VSWR < 1.5, which is 9.7% higher than the previous best design. An
$8\times8$
slot array is designed and fabricated in the
$V$
-band for verification. The bandwidth for
$S_{11} < -10$
dB is widened to 26.3% from 53.8 to 70.0 GHz, and the antenna efficiency is higher than 75% with a bandwidth of 23.6%.