Plastic-based Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) components and antennas

This paper presents the implementation of Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) components and antennas in a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. PET is a cheap and flexible material, which represents an important candidate for the development of future conformal and wearable wireless systems. The characterization of the electrical properties of the material has been performed by the measurement of integrated transmission lines. Passive components (including interconnects, coplanar waveguide-to-SIW transitions, and filters) as well as antennas in SIW technology have been designed and experimentally verified. The achieved results represent the groundwork investigation on the applicability of SIW technology based on cost-effective and flexible materials. They open new perspective for the implementation of ultra low-cost components and systems for application in wireless sensor networks for the future Internet of Things.