A low-cost silicon-based beam-steering grating antenna for G-band applications

This paper presents a Dielectric Image Guide (DIG) beam-steering antenna for operating at G-band. The antenna, which is made of High Resistive Silicon (HRS), is essentially a leaky wave antenna with uniform grating on top. A very accurate, fast, and low-cost laser fabrication process is developed and used for the proposed structure. The radiation mechanism is investigated using full-wave electromagnetic simulations. The antenna provides a frequency-scanning capability up to 20° over the frequency range between 153-165 GHz. The optimized antenna achieves radiation efficiency better than 94% and max gain of 14.2 dBi, which drops only 0.5 dB all over the beam scanning range. The antenna return loss is better than 10 dB over the scanning range.