Surface Wave Mitigation based on Finite EBG Structures for W-band Radar Millimetre-wave MIMO Antenna Arrays

An approach to mitigate the effect of surface waves produced by single element planar antennas in industrial radar MIMO arrays is presented. EBG structures are used to demarcate an effective antenna board region, without fully enclosing the antennas, which could lead to degraded antenna matching or introduce significant antenna pattern changes. The goal is to direct and manage the surface waves in a manner which reduces the antenna power loss and distortion due to surface waves. An approach based on in-house manufacturing was devised for single layer prototyping on small PCBs to evaluate the combined antenna-EBG designs.