Millimeter-Wave Corporate-Fed Slot Array Antenna fed by Partially Dielectric-Filled Transmission Line

Corporate-fed array antennas can direct the main beam toward the boresight regardless of the frequency. Reduction of the transmission loss in corporate-fed arrays is one of the key issues because corporate-fed arrays have longer feed lines than series-fed arrays. Although the configuration using hollow waveguides can achieve low loss, the manufacturing cost and difficulty of production are problematic. On the other hand, microstrip antennas, which can be manufactured at low cost, are not suitable for the millimeter-wave band, where transmission loss is large. In this paper, cost-effective partially dielectric-filled transmission lines with characteristics intermediate between hollow waveguides and printed transmission lines are applied to a corporate-fed array antenna. A design of a 16×16-element corporate-fed slot array antenna is presented.