High‐efficiency planar slot‐array antenna with a single waveguide‐fed cavity‐backed subarray

Abstract

Abstract A cavity‐backed slot antenna array using a single waveguide‐fed subarray is proposed to reduce feed‐line loss, increase radiation efficiency, and make the feed network simple. A subarray consists of 2 × 4 slot elements backed by a single cavity. By proper choice of dimensions, it is shown that the proposed antenna has the characteristics of high radiation efficiency and broad frequency bandwidth. The antenna characteristics for the array antenna with 256 elements are measured in the Ku‐band. A single cavity‐backed subarray has a gain of 18 dBi. The gain of the total antenna array (256 elements) is more than 33 dBi. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 43: 228–231, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20426