Effect of Surface Roughness in Micro-nano Scale on Slotted Waveguide Arrays in Ku-band

Modeling of the roughness in micro-nano scale and its influence have not been fully investigated, however the roughness will cause amplitude and phase errors of the radiating slot, and decrease the precision and efficiency of the SWA in Ku-band. Firstly, the roughness is simulated using the electromechanical coupled(EC) model. The relationship between roughness and the antenna's radiation properties is obtained. For verification, an antenna prototype is manufactured and tested, and the simulation method is introduced. According to the prototype, a contrasting experiment dealing with the flatness of the radiating plane is conducted to test the simulation method. The advantage of the EC model is validated by comparisons of the EC model and two classical roughness models (sine wave and fractal function), which shows that the EC model gives a more accurate description model for roughness, the maximum error is 13%. The existence of roughness strongly broadens the beamwidth and raises the side-lobe level of SWA, which is 1.2 times greater than the ideal antenna. In addition, effect of the EC model's evaluation indices is investigated, the most affected scale of the roughness is found, which is 1/10 of the working wavelength. The proposed research provides the instruction for antenna designing and manufacturing.