A Class of All Metal Cavity-Backed Slot Array With Direct Metal Laser Sintering

In this paper, a class of all-metal cavity-backed slot array employing multiple layers, corporate-feed waveguide network, and coaxial-to-ridged waveguide transition is proposed. The frequency band flexibility of this class of array with a fixed aperture is demonstrated using the direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) technique. Given a fixed aperture, the nominal design operating at 15 GHz with a fractional bandwidth of around 10% can be easily modified to shift the operating frequency from 10.25 to 19.8 GHz. For verification, two designs operating at 10.25-11.8 and 16.9-19.8 GHz, respectively, are described and fabricated using the DMLS technique in AlSi10Mg. The measured results agree well with the simulated ones, which validated the design procedures and proved the reliability of using the DMLS technique to fabricate this class of antenna.