Design and Performance Evaluation of Cavity-Backed SIW Antenna for Monopulse Applications

Abstract

The design of a cavity-backed substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) dual-plane antenna for monopulse application is presented in this publication. The primary objective is to create a four-element circularly polarized cavity-backed slot antenna array that is compact and highly efficient. Two antenna subarrays are utilized to develop a complete analysis, design, and implementation of an antenna, and each antenna element can be used as an independent antenna for monopulse applications. The antenna element is made up of two square ring slot antenna components, a power divider, and a feed point. To produce sum and difference signals, the feed point of each antenna element can be connected to one of the input ports on a monopulse comparator. The antenna's performance at 10 GHz was assessed regarding radiation pattern, gain, return loss, bandwidth, axial ratio, and efficiency. A high-frequency structure simulator (HFSS) simulates a complete planar and compact SIW structure with a footprint of 61.6 mm x 58.1 mm. With a permittivity of 3.55 and a thickness of 1.524 mm, an antenna is manufactured using a photo-lithographic process on a single-layer Rogers RO4003 substrate. As per experimental findings, the antenna has a return loss of -40.17 dB, an RL bandwidth of 395 MHz, a gain of 13.11 dB, an axial ratio of 2.97 dB, and an efficiency of 89.85% at a frequency of 9.92 GHz. Experimental findings reveal exceptional performance parameters for the designed antenna, which can be used for monopulse applications at 10 GHz.