Embedded 6 GHz 3D-Printed Half-Wave Dipole Antenna Array

In this paper, a 2x2 broadside array of 3D printed half-wave dipole antennas is presented. The array design leverages direct digital manufacturing (DDM) technology to realize a shaped substrate structure that is used to control the array beamwidth. The non-planar substrate allows the element spacing to be changed without affecting the length of the feed network or the distance to the underlying ground plane. The 4-element array has a broadside gain that varies between 7.0 - 8.5 dBi depending on the out-of-plane angle of the substrate. Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is deposited using fused deposition modeling to form the array structure (relative permittivity of 2.7 and loss tangent of 0.008) and Dupont CB028 silver paste is used to form the conductive traces.