Half-height pins - a new pin form in gap waveguide for easy manufacturing

Gap waveguide is a promising transmission structure, especially for millimeter wave and THz applications. It does not require conductive connection between the top and bottom plates, and therefore this technology gain advantages over conventional rectangular waveguides and SIWs (Substrate Integrated Waveguides) above 100 GHz. In this paper, a new pin form, the half-height pin, is proposed for the gap waveguide. This new half-height pin form has similar stop-band performance as the previous quarter-wavelength long pin form. However, there must be such half-height pins on both the upper and lower plates, in contrast to one of the two having pins in the original gap waveguide. The shorter length of the pins makes the fabrication of the pin surface much easier, such as by e.g. die-forming, molding or MEMS technology. The current work paves the way for mass production of gap waveguide devices and systems at millimeter wave and THz.