Design of traveling-wave equidistant slot antennas for millimeter-wave applications

In this paper, a new approach is proposed for designing traveling-wave slot antennas for millimeter-wave applications at 77 GHz. A constant slot distance of one guided wavelength is set. The proposed antenna uses inserted vias to ensure low slot reflection and partly compensate the inherent slot phase delta. Cascaded network computation, including complex mutual coupling, allows for optimization of the aperture distribution and more precise knowledge of slot phases. An 8-element array is designed with excellent aperture efficiency, high gain of 14 dB, and -22.5 dB SLL, a very promising candidate for beam forming solutions.