A Switched Array Antenna Module for Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communications

Abstract

This letter presents a switched array antenna module for wireless communications in the 60 GHz band. The array antenna module is composed of four pyramidal horns and four MMIC switches. For connections between the horns and the MMIC switches, a transition block from a waveguide to a microstrip line is developed with a loss of around 0.43 dB. Each horn antenna has a measured gain of 15.3 dBi and the HPBW is 30.6° in the E-plane and 30.7° in the H-plane, respectively. The switched array antenna module can cover 120 degrees with a proper switch setting. The antenna module can be used for multi-Gbps wireless data transmissions in the 60 GHz band where the radio link tends to be easily disconnected because of weak diffraction effect. If an obstacle between a transmitter and a receiver antenna blocks currently active signal path, another antenna path is selected for better signal strength which can be line-of-sight (LOS) or non-line-of-sight (NLOS) depending on the environment. In the NLOS case, the radio link can be maintained using reflected signals.