Wideband Tapered Slot Antenna for D-Band Applications

This paper presents a wideband tapered slot antenna for D-band (110-170 GHz) applications. The antenna is fed by a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and achieves a simulated gain of 11.1 dBi at 170 GHz. The in-band gain variation is less than 3 dB. The designed SIW is based on a thin aluminium nitride (AlN) substrate with hollow plated vias working as the vertical conductor walls. The substrate is extended and inserted into a tapered slot antenna. The concept of designing SIW-fed tapered slot antenna is described in detail. The assembly structure is illustrated and the antenna radiation pattern is shown. The proposed SIW-fed tapered slot antenna also provides a wideband matching at D-band. The simulated return loss remains better than 18 dB from 110 GHz to 170 GHz which corresponds to a bandwidth of 43% at 140 GHz.