Design of a 60GHz RLSA for compact range applications

The design of a 60GHz Radial Line Slot Antenna (RLSA) for compact range communications is discussed in this paper. A taper window was investigated and applied for a uniformly illuminated circular aperture in order to create a uniform field in a specified receiving zone. Predicted results show a good uniformity up to a few meters in the propagation distance, and on a receiving horizontal plane as large as the antenna aperture. A 20cm diameter RLSA prototype was fabricated based on the proposed taper design, and its measured results partly support our predictions.