A Wideband High-Gain High-Efficiency Hybrid Integrated Plate Array Antenna for V-Band Inter-Satellite Links

A wideband high-gain high-efficiency hybrid integrated plate array antenna for inter-satellite links is presented in this paper. This antenna consists of microstrip patches, substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and waveguide power dividers. A novel feeding structure is proposed to excite the microstrip sub-array with a wideband characteristic. The radiation efficiency of SIW arrays with different sizes is compared by experiment. The hybrid SIW-waveguide feeding topology is optimized to realize high efficiency, low cost and compact configuration at the same time. The array antenna is fabricated through standard multi-layer PCB process and milling technology. Measured results demonstrate about 14.6% of reflection coefficient bandwidth ( |S₁₁|<;-10 dB) in the frequency band of 57-66 GHz. The gain fluctuates less than 3 dB within the same band. The 1 dB gain bandwidth is 8.1% within the frequency band of 59-64 GHz. The maximum gain is 39.2 dBi at 59 GHz with the efficiency of 41%.