3D Printed Dielectric Reflectarrays: Low-Cost High-Gain Antennas at Sub-Millimeter Waves (original) (raw)

3D-Printable Dielectric Transmitarray With Enhanced Bandwidth at Millimeter-Waves

IEEE Access, 2018

In this paper, a three-layer dielectric structure is presented as innovative unit-cell element for transmitarray (TA) antennas with enhanced bandwidth. It consists of a central layer, with a varying size square hole, used to compensate the phase of the incident field and located between two other identical layers with linearly tapered square holes, acting as matching circuits. The effectiveness of this unit-cell is demonstrated by the numerical and the experimental results here presented. As a first step, three different TAs with increasing size are designed and simulated: their 1-dB gain bandwidth, centered at 30 GHz, varies from the 30.9% of the smallest configuration, having size of 10λ 0 × 10λ 0 , to the 17.5% of the 20λ 0 × 20λ 0 TA. A slightly modified unit-cell is then designed, with the aim of realizing a prototype with an additive manufacturing (AM) technique. A 3D-printed dielectric TA with a size of 15.6λ 0 × 15.6λ 0 has been manufactured and experimentally characterized. The measured prototype shows excellent performances, achieving a 1-dB gain bandwidth of 21.5%: these results prove the enhanced features of the introduced unit-cell and demonstrate the TA feasibility with AM techniques. INDEX TERMS Wideband antenna, transmitarray antenna, planar lens, discrete lens, tapered matching, 3D-printed antenna, 3D-printing.

3-D-Printed Microwave and THz Devices Using Polymer Jetting Techniques

Proceedings of the IEEE, 2017

3D additive manufacturing (AM) offers unprecedented flexibility in realization of complicated 3D structures. Polymer jetting is one of the promising 3D AM techniques that utilizes photosensitive polymers as the build material and is capable of precisely printing electromagnetic (EM) components up into the THz range. In this paper, important design and implementation aspects of polymer jetting based 3D printed EM components are discussed. A number of 3D printable polymer materials and their broadband EM characterization from GHz to THz are introduced. Design methodologies specific for 3D printed antennas and other EM components are presented. As examples, various 3D printed devices operating from GHz to THz frequency including electromagnetic crystals (EMXT), waveguide, horn antenna, gradient index (GRIN) lenses, as well as 3D AM enabled new designs such as millimeter wave (mmW) / THz reflect array antennas, computer generated THz holograms and so on are reviewed. Moreover, current limitations and possible future improvements of polymer jetting technique for EM applications are discussed. This type of 3D additive manufacturing technique is likely to enable many novel antenna and circuit architectures as well as various interesting 3D metamaterial structures.

A Review of Broadband Low-Cost and High-Gain Low-Terahertz Antennas for Wireless Communications Applications

IEEE Access, 2020

Low-terahertz (Low-THz, 100 GHz-1.0 THz) technology is expected to provide unprecedented data rates in future generations of wireless system such as the 6 th generation (6G) mobile communication system. Increasing the carrier frequencies from millimeter wave to THz is a potential solution to guarantee the transmission rate and channel capacity. Due to the large transmission loss of Low-THz wave in free space, it is particularly urgent to design high-gain antennas to compensate the additional path loss, and to overcome the power limitation of Low-THz source. Recently, with the continuous updating and progress of additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP) technology, antennas with complicated structures can now be easily manufactured with high precision and low cost. In the first part, this paper demonstrates different approaches of recent development on wideband and high gain sub-millimeter-wave and Low-THz antennas as well as their fabrication technologies. In addition, the performances of the state-of-the-art wideband and high-gain antennas are presented. A comparison among these reported antennas is summarized and discussed. In the second part, one case study of a broadband high-gain antenna at 300 GHz is introduced, which is an all-metal model based on the Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC) theory. The proposed FPC antenna is very suitable for manufacturing using AM technology, which provides a low-cost, reliable solution for emerging THz applications. INDEX TERMS Antennas, low-terahertz, additive manufacturing (AM), high gain, Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC), low-cost, three-dimensional printing (3DP). I. INTRODUCTION A.

Demonstration of a High-Efficiency Reflectarray Antenna at 1 THz Based on Dielectric Resonators

2016

A reflectarray antenna composed of more than 87000 single-crystal silicon resonators on a gold ground plane is experimentally demonstrated to achieve efficient beam focusing at 1 THz. The functionality of the reflectarray as a collimator is also verified by the principle of antenna reciprocity. Because of the low-loss and nondispersive nature of high-resistivity silicon in the submillimeter regime, the losses of the reflectarray are negligible, a very desirable feature at such frequencies. Reflectarrays based on dielectric resonator antennas (DRA) have been relatively unexplored in the terahertz range, mainly because of the challenging fabrication process.

Affordable Terahertz Components using 3D Printing

This paper presents the design and characterization of 3D printed photonic crystal filter (quasi optic component) and dielectric ridge waveguide (integrated component). Commercially available 3D printer was used to print polymer based components. Design and characterization of these devices is carried out over a frequency range of 0.15 - 0.5 THz. The photonic crystal filter shows a stop band from 0.25 - 0.35 THz. Also a very narrow defect mode (notch filter) was introduced by altering the structure of photonic crystal. The dielectric ridge waveguide shows broadband THz propagation characteristics. The transmission loss was determined to be largely dominated by the loss characteristics of the polymer material used.

Design of LTCC Based 3-D Antenna for Sub-THz Application

Periodica Polytechnica Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016

In the paper, selected aspects of LTCC technology for fabrication of passive elements for microwave application are presented. The research effect is based on the example of experimental 3-D antenna performed for a sub-THz scanner. For the described methods of antennas performance the achieved printing quality have been determined basing on observations using a digital microscope Hirox KH7700 and measurements of geometrical dimensions. The impact of geometrical structure dimensions and printed pattern resolution on its working abilities is also discussed. The main emphasis of the research work is on high resolution metallization obtainment by modification of screen printing parameters and conditions (the angle and pressure of squeegee, the mesh size), laser ablation and co-firing profile.

Analysis of 3D-printed metal for rapid-prototyped reflective terahertz optics

We explore the potential of 3D metal printing to realize complex conductive terahertz devices. Factors impacting performance such as printing resolution, surface roughness, oxidation, and material loss are investigated via analytical, numerical, and experimental approaches. The high degree of control offered by a 3D-printed topology is exploited to realize a zone plate operating at 530 GHz. Reflection efficiency at this frequency is found to be over 90%. The high-performance of this preliminary device suggest that 3D metal printing can play a strong role in guided-wave and general beam control devices in the terahertz range.

Sub-THz Antenna for High-Speed Wireless Communication Systems

International Journal of Antennas and Propagation

Terahertz (THz) links will play a major role in high data rate communication over a distance of few meters. In order to achieve this task, antenna designs with high gain and wideband characteristics will spearhead these links. In this contribution, we present different antenna designs that offer characteristics better suited to THz communication over short distances. Firstly, a single-element antenna having a dipole and reflector is designed to operate at 300 GHz, which is considered as a sub-terahertz band. That antenna achieves a wide impedance bandwidth of 38.6% from 294 GHz to 410 GHz with a gain of 5.14 dBi. Secondly, two designs based on the same dipole structure but with added directors are introduced to increase the gain while maintaining almost the same bandwidth. The gains achieved are 8.01 dBi and 9.6 dBi, respectively. Finally, an array of 1×4 elements is used to achieve the highest possible gain of 13.6 dBi with good efficiency about 89% and with limited director elemen...

Sub-terahertz microstrip antenna array for future communication

2023 International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Energy Technologies (ICECET), 2023

In this article, a microstrip patch antenna array has been designed for sub-terahertz application. The designed antenna array consists of four rectangular-shaped radiating patches which are fed using the microstrip line feeding technique. The dielectric material utilized as a substrate is Roger RO3010 which has an epsilon value of 11.2, responsible for compact antenna size, it also exhibits minimal energy absorption and dissipation. The designed antenna has achieved acceptable simulated results of important parameters which include radiation pattern, Gain, and return loss, Bandwidth, current distribution, and impedance matching of the antenna. The designed antenna array offers increased bandwidth, enabling higher data rates and ultra-low latency. The proposed Sub-terahertz antenna array can support the deployment of high-speed, low-latency wireless networks for applications such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), autonomous vehicles, and smart cities.

Hybrid 3-D-Printing Technology for Tunable THz Applications

Proceedings of the IEEE

In this paper, a hybrid manufacturing approach is presented that combines metallized passive components produced through the polymer-jetting process with active semiconductor devices. The potential for producing low-cost THz communication systems using this methodology is demonstrated with the successful development of a THz I-Q vector modulator.