Resumen de Gap waveguide array antennas and corporate-feed networks for mm-wave band applications
This thesis deals with topics of special interest regarding the design of antennas at the mm-wave band. Today, implementing passive components that operate in the mm-wave band and to ensure the appropriate metallic contact is challenging. Commonly, conventional planar transmission lines and hollow metallic waveguides are the usual solutions but they present high losses or they do not ensure a good metallic contact. So, new concepts must be explored.
Gap Waveguides (GWs), result suitably since they do not require metallic contact for shielding. Antenna arrays in Gap Waveguide Technology (GW) emerges as one promising candidate to naturally meet some of the mentioned needs. GW technology has demonstrated to be effective for mm-wave band devices because it enables full-metal distribution networks in a much simpler way than conventional waveguides. Very low distribution losses can be achieved preserving at the same time the assembly simplicity of multilayer microstrip feeding networks. This unique feature is a consequence of gap waveguides ability to safely confine the electromagnetic wave propagation through a contactless structure.
During the last decade, there have been important advances in GW technology and a good number of gap waveguide-based arrays can be found in the literature. This thesis goes a step further in the contribution to mm-wave gap waveguide antennas. Here, antennas with linear polarization as well as circular or dual polarization are proposed. Dual band antennas has also been explored. These contributions have been carried out with a focus on satellite communications on-the-move.
In addition, new distribution networks have also been explored to obtain more compact, low-profile and lighter antennas.
