Design of W-band Metal Step-constant Tapered Slot Antenna for Active Phased Array

Abstract

A mechanically robust tapered slot antenna in W-band has been presented in this paper. The proposed antenna is constructed by a stripline between two LTCC substrates which acts as fed structure and a metal package with step-constant slot shape which acts as radiation structure. A wide impedance bandwidth from 82 to 96 GHz with active VSWR $< 2$ is realized and a high antenna gain better than 6 dB is achieved. To highlight the wide-angle scanning characteristics, a $1 \times 8$ antenna array in E-plane using our proposed antenna has also been investigated. Beam patterns steering from 0 to 20 degree with low backward radiation have been observed. Besides the merits of compact structure and high physical strength, our proposed antenna is able to be integrated with LTCC based T/R module by using micro-assembly technology, showing bright future to be used in mmW active phased array radar.