High gain substrate integrated waveguide antenna with enhanced bandwidth for millimeter-wave wireless network applications

A high-gain slotted waveguide antenna in substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) configuration with enhanced bandwidth is proposed. Two different cases fabricated using Rogers RO 4003 substrate over a small area of 16 × 4.5 × 0.508 mm³ are discussed. SIW-based antenna having four longitudinally placed slots is studied with the help of simulation and experimental studies. Experimental results revealed that the proposed hourglass-shaped slot effectively enhanced the operation bandwidth without using additional complicated mechanisms. Improvement in bandwidth was achieved from the low-Q characteristics of the hourglass-shaped slots evidenced through the Z11 impedance analysis. The proposed hourglass-shaped slotted waveguide antenna exhibited 3.18% (37.09–38.29 GHz) impedance bandwidth with 5.8 dBi antenna gain at 38 GHz, where 1.08% bandwidth improvement was observed. Such low-profile planar structure resonating at mm-wave frequency band having high gain and improved bandwidth can be a suitable choice for integration with devices working in wireless network applications.