Investigation of a Superstrate Loaded Ultrawideband Dual-Ridged Terahertz Pyramidal Horn Antenna

This work presents the design and investigation of a terahertz pyramidal ultrawideband (UWB) horn antenna featuring a metallic dual-ridged structure with dielectric superstrate (DS) loading. Initially, a pyramidal horn antenna is designed at a 1.5 THz center frequency, and its performance is analyzed numerically. Further, to improve its S-11 bandwidth (BW) at lower terahertz frequencies the technique of dual-ridge loading has been employed. Next, to enhance the gain and directivity of the dual-ridged antenna, DS loading has been introduced. To achieve an optimal response, a low permittivity porous silica dielectric superstrate with a dielectric constant & varepsilon;(r) = 2, and loss tangent tan delta = 0.011 is employed, and its geometrical shape is suitably chosen. The proposed terahertz horn antenna exhibits UWB response (143%) with substantial gain (>19 dBi), aperture efficiency of 62.8% and radiation as well as total efficiency (>88%). To the best of our knowledge such design and analysis of a THz horn antenna is reported for the first time. To ascertain the practicality of the antenna, a photoconductive dipole is used as a feed for its excitation and found its performance promising. Thus, the proposed antenna could be a suitable candidate for 6G and other ultra-fast terahertz communication systems.