Low-Cost Planar Omnidirectional Antenna for mm-Wave Applications

This letter presents a planar omnidirectional antenna structure with wide beam for applications in the 60-GHz band. The antenna was designed using only one metal layer on top of a quartz substrate, which is very cost efficient. The optimal structure, of size 4.5 times 4.3 mm², exhibits a gain of 1.4 dBi plusmn 0.5 dBi in the omnidirectional plane and a half power beam width of about 75 deg in the perpendicular plane. The bandwidth with return loss at least 10 dB covers the 57-64-GHz license-free band, which is commonly considered for very high data rate communications. The consistency of the simulated results was successfully checked with measurements.