Systematic Design Procedure for Y-Junction Circulator Based on Ridge Gap Waveguide Technology

A Y-junction circulator based on the ridge gap waveguide (RGW) as a hosting guiding structure is designed using a developed closed-form systematic procedure. To validate the structure, an air-filled-to-dielectric-filled transition is proposed using a substrate perforation technique. The proposed RGW circulator covers the whole Ku-band with a matching bandwidth throughout the operational bandwidth below -15 dB. A prototype is fabricated and tested, providing a satisfactory agreement with the simulated results.