A wide-angle scanning switched-beam antenna system in LTCC technology with high beam crossing levels for V-band communications

Francesco Foglia Manzillo (1, 2) , Maciej Smierzchalski (1, 2) , Laurent Le Coq (1) , Mauro Ettorre (1) , Jouko Aurinsalo (3) , Kari T Kautio (3) , Markku Lahti (3) , Antti E I Lamminen (3) , Jussi Saily (3) , Ronan Sauleau (1)

1 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique
2 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
3 VTT - VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Wide-angle coverage, fine angular resolution and low-power consumption are key characteristics of millimeterwave (mm-wave) short-range wireless systems, such as access points in fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks and automotive radars. In this paper, we present a 60-GHz switched-beam antenna system addressing all these requirements. It consists of two identical parallel-fed arrays of 8 slots, each fed by a passive pillbox beamformer. A switch network comprising four singlepole- multiple-throw (SPnT) switches excites one of the two arrays at a time and selects the radiated beam. The whole system is fully-integrated in a multilayer low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) module. The antenna covers a scan range of about ±39° in one plane using eleven beams, between 57 GHz and 66 GHz. The proposed architecture enables the simultaneous achievement of continuous coverage (beam crossover levels of about -3 dB) and of low sidelobe levels (SLLs). Dedicated numerical tools are used for a preliminary design of the antenna. The design procedure, the technological development and the experimental results are discussed in detail.

Mots clés: low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC); switched-beam antenna; millimeter-wave antennas; 60-GHz communications; 5G

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Francesco Foglia Manzillo, Maciej Smierzchalski, Laurent Le Coq, Mauro Ettorre, Jouko Aurinsalo, et al.. A wide-angle scanning switched-beam antenna system in LTCC technology with high beam crossing levels for V-band communications. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2019, 67 (1), pp.541-553. ⟨10.1109/TAP.2018.2877467⟩. ⟨hal-01952288⟩