A D-Band Corporate-Feed Gap-Cavity Slot Array Antenna Using Virtual PEC Method

A D-band corporate-feed gap-cavity slot array is proposed with wide bandwidth and high aperture efficiency. The cavity with higher order modes is implemented by using the gap waveguide (WG) technology, namely, a gap cavity. To ensure that the gap cavity is operating with the desired higher order mode over a wide bandwidth, the corporate-feed architecture is applied for uniform excitation and with alternating-phase between adjacent slots. The gap cavity is split into multiple elements by using zero-thickness virtual perfect electric conductor (PEC) walls. With this unique approach, the design, fabrication, and assembly complexities are reduced. For experimental verification, a gap cavity with an 8
$\times $
8 slot array is designed in the 120 GHz band, and an E-plane WG feeding network is proposed to excite the TE
₈₈₀
-mode. Two metal fences are introduced on either side of the radiating slot, and an inductive metal pin is introduced below the radiating slot to improve the radiation performance and broaden the bandwidth. The measured impedance matching bandwidth is around 110–144.8 GHz (27.3%). The measured peak gain is 26.22 dBi at 137.64 GHz, and the measured peak aperture efficiency is 86.2% at 115.325 GHz. The 3 dB gain bandwidth is the same as the impedance matching bandwidth.