Overview of High Frequency Electronics Integration Concepts for Gap waveguide based High Gain Slot Antenna Array

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of different low-loss microstrip to waveguide transition designs suitable for integrating millimeter wave electronics to a gap waveguide based slot array. Typically, E-plane probe type of transitions are widely used at mmWave frequency range to couple RF signal from a TX/RX MMIC to the waveguide section. H-plane split-blocks are avoided due to leakage problem from tiny slits formed by imperfect metal connections. On the other hand, the traditional slot arrays are built using H-plane split blocks. This makes it very challenging to integrate electronics and other passive components such as diplexer filter directly to a high gain planar antenna array. To overcome this above mentioned problem, we propose to use low-loss H-plane transitions to integrate RF electronics with the multi-layer gap waveguide based slot array. We demonstrate a completely packaged frontend at E-band, showing the potential of the gap waveguide technology to build a very compact full-duplex wireless system.