A Compact Cavity-Based Leaky-Wave Antenna in a Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic Process With Improved Performance

An approach for improving the gain of the leaky-wave antenna (LWA) is presented in this paper. Embedding cavities in the structure leads to gain improvement. To validate the proposed method, it was implemented on a half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) LWA. The proposed HMSIW LWA was realized on a low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) structure to achieve a compact structure. The key novelty of the proposed antenna is the gain improvement by using embedded cavities without increasing the antenna size. Applying the novel design method results in a measured peak realized gain of 7.6 dBi. Tapering the aperture leads to about 6 dB reduction of sidelobe level (SLL) in the upper hemisphere as well. The impedance matching frequency bandwidth of the antenna ranges from 28.3 to 29 GHz that falls within the 5G mm-wave frequency bands. The length, width, and thickness of the antenna are 40 mm, 16 mm, and 1 mm, respectively. The compactness, medium gain, and low loss of the proposed antenna make it a suitable candidate for 5G wireless devices. A good agreement between the measured and simulated results is observed.