Substrate Size Impact on the Radiation Pattern of a Sub-THz Printed Antenna
Abstract
In this paper, we study the effect of the transverse dimensions of a "thick" substrate on the printed antenna radiation properties in the sub-THz range. A four-element series-fed dipole array operating at 100-116 GHz is chosen as a test antenna. It is printed on a rectangular grounded aluminum oxide substrate (99.5% Alumina) with a thickness of 0.05 mm, 0.1 mm, or 0.2 mm, in which only the fundamental mode of the surface wave can exist. The studies used the full-wave electromagnetic simulation method with Altair FEKO 2022 software. It is shown that pulsations can appear in the main beam of the antenna on a truncated substrate, the frequency of which increases proportionally to the width of the substrate, and the amplitude grows with increasing its thickness. With an increase in the substrate size, quasi-periodic variations in the antenna normal-side directivity and gain are also observed, the period of which is equal to two surface wavelengths. The antenna radiation efficiency weakly depends on the substrate width, but increases noticeably with its thickening. It is shown that using a metasurface that significantly weakens the surface wave is an effective means of reducing the substrate edges' effect on the antenna characteristics..
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