Wideband Star-shaped mmWave Planar Array Antenna with Liquid Crystal

Abstract

This paper introduces a wideband star-shaped planar antenna with a liquid crystal (LC) material at Ka-band. The antenna array consists of the LC cavity and planar antenna elements with a microstrip feedline. Planar antenna array is designed with eight star-shaped patches. To check the LC dielectric constant at Ka-band, the designed antenna is fabricated and measured result of reflection coefficient(S11) ≤ −10 dB shows across the wideband (27 GHz – 40 GHz) without DC biasing with bean scanning from −62° to +5° and gain ≥ 8.15 dBi. The frequency range can be tuned with applied biasing voltage on the LC cavity.