Joint Design and Experimental Tests of Highly Integrated Phased-Array Antenna With Microchannel Heat Sinks

This letter proposes a Ka-band highly integrated phased-array antenna (HIPAA) by utilizing the joint design of phased-array antennas and microchannel heat sinks. In the HIPAA, 52-element patch antennas, tile transmitting modules, microchannel heat sinks, and a stripline feeding network were integrated in a 2.8 mm thin functional block. Moreover, a new microchannel heat sink with a ladder-shaped inlet header was designed to decrease the maximum temperature and temperature nonuniformity. A low-temperature cofired ceramic was applied to fabricate the antenna prototype. The electromagnetic and thermal experiments were conducted, and a satisfactory performance was achieved: a peak gain of 20.9 dBi, a sidelobe level of -12 dB, and the scanning angle range from -44.5° to 45.3°.