Additively Fabricated Air-Filled Waveguide Integrated With Printed Circuit Board Using a Through-Patch Transition

Abstract

The hybrid integration of an additively fabricated air-filled waveguide (WG) with a printed circuit board (PCB) is presented. An arrangement is proposed where different waveguiding structures share the same common metal plane on PCB. Such an approach allows combining the low-loss and high- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$ </tex-math></inline-formula> properties of an air-filled waveguide, active circuit realization of the strip transmission line, and 3-D capabilities of additive manufacturing. A broadband transition is developed employing a through-patch coupling interface from a microstrip (MS) line to a waveguide. The concept was experimentally validated with exemplary transitions operating within <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$X$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band, featuring a measured bandwidth of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{h}/f_{l}~ \approx ~1.4$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and average per-transition loss including connecting lines of ~1.2 and ~1.9 dB, respectively.