Additive Manufactured Millimeter Wave Off-Axis Bull's-Eye Antenna

Abstract

Despite their low profile and competitive radiation characteristics, most of the devices in the corrugated leaky wave antenna family feature an unnecessary excess weight which result detrimental for current innovative applications, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), aircrafts or satellite antennas. Stereolitography, accompanied by plating, is presented as an economic and fast solution for the manufacturing of lightweight devices, which at the same time is able to overcome traditional metal drilling/spark erosion manufacturing limitations, like the impossibility of eroding extremely narrow grooves. Here we present an elliptical Bull's-Eye antenna operating at 96 GHz fabricated following a 3D-printing and copper coating process. Due to its off-centered grooves distribution, a tilted beam pointing at 16.5° is obtained, presenting a gain of 17 dB and 3.5 beamwidth. The theoretical analysis conducted to obtain the equations which govern the grooves distribution and shape is also presented. This prototype results of interest for point-to-point communications where direct front side view is not possible, as well as for applications where lightweight and cost-effective antennas are needed, such as satellite communications or deployed in UAV's