A Hollow-Waveguide-Fed Planar Wideband Patch Antenna Array for Terahertz Communications

This article presents a design of terahertz (THz) patch antenna array with high gain and wideband features. The proposed array consists of eight subarrays printed on a single-layer high-frequency laminate and a power distribution network realized by a hollow waveguide made from a copper block. The simulated results show that the subarray can achieve an impedance bandwidth of 37% for the reflection coefficient < −10 dB with a peak gain of 15.2 dBi at 155 GHz. The 1-to-8 hollow-waveguide network has a simulated reflection coefficient below −14 dB and a simulated transmission loss smaller than 0.4 dB. A parametric analysis is implemented to determine the range of key parameters of the subarray and find out fabrication tolerance of the array at such high frequency. The measured results show that the proposed array achieves the reflection coefficient below −10 dB from 150 to 205 GHz. The measured 3-dB gain bandwidth of the proposed antenna array is 19.7% with a maximum gain of 21.9 dBi. These performances ensure that the proposed array is a promising candidate for THz communications.