The enormous growth of wireless data traffic in recent years has made the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technology as a good fit for high-speed communication systems. Extensive works are continuing from the device to system, to the radio architecture, to the network to support the communication in mm-wave frequency ranges. To support this extensive high data rate, beam forming is found to be the key-enabling technology. Hence, an array antenna design is an extremely important issue. The beam-forming arrays are chosen to achieve the desired link capacity considering the high path loss and atmospheric loss at mm-wave frequencies and also to increase the coverage of the mm-wave communication system. There are diverse design challenges of the array due to the small size, use of large numbers of antennas in close vicinity, integration with radio-frequency (RF) front ends, hardware constraints, and so on. This paper focuses on the evolution and development of mm-wave array antenna and its implementation for wireless communication and numerous other related areas. The scope of the discussion is extended on the reported works in every sphere of mm-wave antenna array design, including the selection of antenna elements, array configurations, feed mechanism, integration with front-end circuitry to understand the effects on system performance, and the underlying reason of it. The new design aspects and research directions are unfolded as a result of this discussion.

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An Inclusive Survey on Array Antenna Design for Millimeter-Wave Communications

Direct broadcast satellite (DBS) reception requires a circularly polarized antenna with high gain and low axial ratio. Recently, various types of planar antennas have been studied and developed for DBS reception in the 12-GHz band. A summary is presented of properties and classification of planar antennas both commercialized and reported. The basic configurations, working principles, and performance of various planar antennas are described. >

Planar antennas for satellite reception

This paper describes the radiation characteristics of crank-line antennas radiating a circularly polarized wave. First, the radiation efficiency versus substrate permittivity is evaluated. Second, a 12-cell crank-line antenna of substrate permittivity /spl epsi//sub r/=1 and antenna height B=/spl lambda//sub 11.85/ is investigated as a reference antenna, where /spl lambda//sub 11.85/ is the wavelength at a frequency of 11.85 GHz. It is found that the main beam direction of the reference antenna varies 7/spl deg/ over a frequency range of approximately 6%, with an axial ratio of less than 3 dB and a gain of approximately 21 dB. Third, attention is paid to the gain behavior versus the antenna height. A way to increase the gain by modifying the antenna height is proposed. An increase of 1.5 dB from the gain of the reference antenna is demonstrated. Finally, the axial ratio, gain, and decoupling factor for crank-line antenna arrays are presented and discussed.

Analysis and measurements for improved crank-line antennas

We present a high gain 24 GHz crank line (CL) antenna fed by a modified Wilkinson power divider (WPD) network The CL is formed by four parallel Rampart arrays transmitting a circularly polarized wave With the WPD we achieve a uniform coupling of the Rampart structures and an impedance transformation from 50 Omega to the 100 Omega antenna impedance The gain of the antenna is 20 dBi in the frequency range from 236 GHz to 246 GHz

High gain crank line antenna for 24 GHz

We investigate a circularly polarized (CP) transmission-line antenna composed of loop radiation elements, called a loop-line antenna. To enhance the CP wave bandwidth, an isolated loop radiation element is first analyzed using the method of moments. It is found that a CP wave bandwidth for a 3 dB axial-ratio criterion has a maximum value of 8%. On the basis of the analysis results, we design the loop-line antenna. It is found that the antenna shows a CP wave bandwidth of 6%, which is twice as wide as that of a conventional loop-line antenna. The analysis results are verified with experimental ones. In addition, a condition for wideband CP radiation is discussed and found to be a composite radiation element consisting of two CP loops.

/pdf/a-loop-line-antenna-with-enhanced-bandwidth-of-circular-4cjr86dl62.pdf

A Loop-Line Antenna with Enhanced Bandwidth of Circular Polarization

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel6/8255/25861/01149085.pdf

T. Makimoto

Papers

Crank-type circularly polarized microstrip line antenna