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IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
Volume 47 Number 12, December 1999

Table of Contents for this issue

Complete paper in PDF format

A 94-GHz Aperture-Coupled Micromachined Microstrip Antenna

Gildas P. Gauthier, Student Member, IEEE, Jean-Pierre Raskin, Member, IEEE, Linda P. B. Katehi, Fellow, IEEE, and Gabriel M. Rebeiz, Fellow, IEEE

Page 1761.

Abstract:

This paper presents an aperture-coupled micromachined microstrip antenna operating at 94 GHz. The design consists of two stacked silicon substrates: 1) the top substrate, which carries the microstrip antenna, is micromachined to improve the radiation performance of the antenna and 2) the bottom substrate, which carries the microstrip feed line and the coupling slot. The measured return loss is -18 dB at 94 GHz for a 10-dB bandwidth of 10%. A maximum efficiency of 58 ± 5% has been measured and the radiation patterns show a measured front-to-back ratio of -10 dB at 94 GHz. The measured mutual coupling is below -20 dB in both E- and H-plane directions due to the integration of small 50-µm silicon beams between the antennas. The micromachined microstrip antenna is an efficient solution to the vertical integration of antenna arrays at millimeter-wave frequencies.

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