Compact Additively Manufactured Conformal Slotted Waveguide Antenna Array

In this work we present the design and fabrication in metallic 3D-printing of a compact conformal slotted waveguide antenna array operating in the Ku-band. The application objective, although not limited only to this, is the optimisation of an antenna element which by stacking will be able to form a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters 2023-08, Vol.22 (8), p.1-5
Main Authors: Stoumpos, Charalampos, Gouguec, Thierry Le, Allanic, Rozenn, Garcia-Vigueras, Maria, Amiaud, Anne-Charlotte
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3-D printing
Additive Manufacturing
Aluminum
Antenna arrays
Antenna design
Antenna measurements
Antennas
Bandwidth
Bandwidths
Beam steering
Beamforming
conformal slotted waveguide antenna array
Engineering Sciences
Fabrication
Laser beam melting
Optimization
Prototypes
Reflectance
Selective Laser Melting
Slot antennas
Three dimensional printing
Waveguide antennas
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Summary:In this work we present the design and fabrication in metallic 3D-printing of a compact conformal slotted waveguide antenna array operating in the Ku-band. The application objective, although not limited only to this, is the optimisation of an antenna element which by stacking will be able to form a quasi-cylindrical sector. A beamforming network will be used for beam-steering in the elevation plane as coverage in the azimuthal plane is guaranteed by the conformal geometry. The compact design of the antenna element is therefore of great significance. For this reason, a direct feeding scheme by a coaxial connector is adopted. The antenna has been optimized following multiple parametric analyses of its geometrical parameters for the enhancement of the bandwidth, return losses and realized gain. The antenna was fabricated with Selective Laser Melting in aluminium and the experimental results agree well with the numerically calculated ones. The proposed CSWAA exhibits a reflection coefficient below -10 dB, realized gain above 14 dBi, as well as good cross-polarization and side-lobe level over a relative bandwidth of 8%.
ISSN:1536-1225
1548-5757
DOI:10.1109/LAWP.2023.3266376