Abstract
In this contribution, a combined electric field/magnetic field surface/volume integral equation approach is presented with special features for the characterization of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) components. Due to the use of a parallel-plate waveguide Green’s function, only a small number of volume current basis functions are necessary to model the vias of the SIW sidewalls. The focal point is set on the specification of microstrip-SIW transitions using a via and a pad/antipad configuration for the coupling between the microstrip parts and the SIW and transitions with a two-stage ridged substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) where the SIW has a very thick substrate with regard to the microstrip line making it well suited for the design of a new class of compact end-fire SIW antennas for phased array applications which are partly characterized with CST Microwave Studio. An effective S-parameter extraction is used with both microstrip and special SIW waveguide ports.
Keywords
- integral equation
- surface/volume discretization
- microstrip-SIW transitions
- S-parameter extraction
- via and slot modeling
- horn
- slot/leaky wave antennas
1. Introduction
Due to the trend to higher frequencies, substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) components and antennas are once more well-suited building blocks to realize applications with low losses and compact design. A SIW consists of two periodic rows of metallic vias connecting metallic strips (or ground planes) on top and bottom of a dielectric substrate as a quasi-planar structure and can thus very easily integrated and fabricated together with other microstrip/coplanar components using standard printed circuit board technologies and can be considered as a filled rectangular waveguide with the via rows as sidewalls [3]. Therefore, SIWs have the same low loss properties and first designs can be made using tools for the calculation of rectangular waveguide components. Thus, SIWs are increasingly used for antenna feeding networks with power dividers, filters, resonators, couplers, and phase shifters in micro- and mm-wave applications. For the full-wave characterization of such components, frequently mode matching techniques are proposed, but they are typically restricted to the modeling of the SIW components itself but without considering transitions to a microstrip/coplanar environment or radiating slot elements [2]. At the moment a strong interest is set on compact broadband horn-like SIW antennas with end-fire radiation characteristic [10, 11]. However, to reach the desired broadband properties with compact dimensions suited for phased array applications, SIWs on a thick substrate are needed. Simple microstrip-SIW transitions or interconnects like in [3, 6] cannot be used for the excitation of such thick SIWs; in this context, tapered transitions in vertical and lateral direction are proposed in [4]. In contrast to this, we have presented a two-stage transition based on a Chebychef design in [5]. Since the fabrication of the ridged-SIW structures is quite elaborate, we have also investigated transitions using a shorted via between the microstrip line and the bottom of the SIW as given in [6]. Such structure can be easily fabricated, but the bandwidth becomes small using thicker substrates. For thick substrates we investigate transitions where the length of the coupling via is smaller than the SIW thickness like the typical probes in standard rectangular waveguides. For the characterization of these structures, we have extended an integral equation approach [7] with special features for the effective characterization of SIWs. Based on the Green’s functions of multilayered media, a substrate-filled parallel-plate medium can be used in many cases; thus together with volume basis functions for vertical currents, only the vias of the SIWs must be discretized. The microstrip parts are modeled with electric surface currents, whereas the antipads and other apertures are modeled with magnetic surface currents allowing the characterization of a class of leaky wave antennas [8] with very low computational effort. A further task was the careful S-parameter determination comprising both microstrip- and SIW waveguide ports.
2. Formulation with first applications
The round vias of SIW structures with diameter
The vias are then modeled with quadratic volume current basis functions (piecewise constant current in height) connecting the corresponding metallic sheets of one SIW waveguide with typically only one basis function per via. For multilayer microstrip-SIW transitions and other SIW components and circuits, we use a very effective modeling and discretization strategy [7]. The SIWs are modeled with parallel-plate media where the metallic plates are connected by the vias of the SIW. A typical scheme, here with SIW waveguide ports, is given in Figure 1. It consists of two SI waveguides on different levels and SIW ports with a slot coupling (blue) and optional slots for the radiation in the upper half space, which can be free space or a complex stratified medium. As indicated in the side view, the slots are modeled with corresponding magnetic surface currents (also in blue) at the upper and lower side of the corresponding metallic sheet with opposite signs leading to a magnetic field integral equation for the magnetic currents. A sketch of the used basis functions is given in Figure 2.
For the matrix entries in the method of moments concerning magnetic surface current functions
with the composite Green’s function:
which is the sum of the Green’s functions
with a complete analytical treatment of the space-domain integrations, and for couplings between magnetic and volume currents, we get a matrix entry without dimension, denoted with
The spectral domain integrations are carried out with two different strategies depending on the lateral distance of the basis functions.
A structure well suited for testing of different features of the method is given in Figure 3. At the right, we apply a SIW port 2 or a SIW absorber consisting of only five volume functions connected by lumped resistors with the metallic sheets.
The SIW ports consist of an excitation via and four via (volume) functions here only used for field (voltage) monitoring in the center of the SIW to extract the forward and backward waves in the SIW for S-parameter calculation.
To compute the voltages at the field monitoring vias, at first the complete coupling matrix with all via functions is computed. Afterward the matrix is compressed by deleting the matrix columns related to the monitor functions and by taking out the related line entries stored for later reuse and the voltage computation. |S11|,tl and |S12|,tl are the results for the homogeneous through line with nearly an ideal matching and transmission showing the good performance of the SIW port model and S-parameter extraction.|S11|,abs shows the broadband matching with the 5-via absorber at the right using 240 Ohm resistors connecting the vias to the ground plane. Such an absorber can be used as an effective numerical broadband-matched termination of a SIW, but it should also be possible to manufacture it using SMD resistors connecting the vias with the ground planes.
For another test the SIW is fitted with two slots of length 2.34 mm in the middle. The separation and length of the slots are chosen in such a way that we get a so-called reflection-canceling slot pair. |S11|,ds denotes the matching with the additional reflection-canceling slot pair showing a quite good matching around 36–37 GHz.
A good test for the reliability of the numerical solutions and to get a detailed insight into the power flow of a structure is the computation of the power balance. Thus the input power at the excitation via (Figure 3) is
The absorbed energy within the
And the radiated space wave energy into the upper halfspace is determined with the help of the saddle point method leading to the integral
with the wavenumbers
If the structures are analyzed with infinite low dielectric and metallic losses,
must hold. The results for the SIW with the absorber and the slot pair are given in Figure 4, right. It can be seen that the radiation power is below 20 percent up to about 37 GHz (the frequency band with good matching) with only one slot pair, whereas about 80 percent is converted in the absorber. If the input power according to Eq. (5) is normalized to 100 percent, then the sum in Eq. (8) leads to the red curve in Figure 4, right. Except some small deviation in the region 40–42 GHz, the 100 percent are met with good accuracy. However, for this accuracy the number of sampling points for the numerical integration must be quite high.
For an improved computational performance, a general coupling integral reads
where
For basis functions with very small lateral separations or overlapping functions and self-couplings, an asymptotic representation
A leaky wave antenna for end-fire radiation is given in Figure 6 applying slots with constant length (l = 1.9 mm) in the middle and additional tapered slot areas at the ends for better matching. The simulated matching behavior is given in Figure 7 together with the desired bandwidth for the MIMO radar project in [12].
A good test for the reliability of the results is to compute the sum of the absorbed power
3. Microstrip to SIW transitions
For the connection of structures like in Figure 6 to a microstrip circuitry, a microstrip-SIW transition like in Figure 9 is well suited, consisting of a microstrip line with width
The permittivity for both the microstrip line and the SIW is
For the consistent evaluation of the wave quantities
Figure 10 shows the results with the own IG-approach and with the time domain approach of CST Microwave Studio both with a very similar behavior. The green curve for
with
In this case the feed via has only a length of 1.0 mm within the SIW with a height of 2.5 mm. Again the permittivity for both the microstrip line and the SIW is
In this case, an additional pad did not show a further improvement, but with the shape of the antipad (blue), a further slight optimization could be performed, leading to a length of 0.9 mm and a width of 0.7 mm. However, with these specifications, we not yet achieve a matching below −10 dB in the desired frequency range from 30 to 40 GHz, but we get a flat curve between −7 and − 8 dB for
Besides this kind of transition, we have also specified transitions with a stepwise ridged waveguide. These structures are similar than the proposed transitions in [4], but we do not need the quite complex tapered shapes described in [4]. Our design is based on a two-stage Chebychef approach which can handle also much higher transform ratios than the designs in [6]. A typical design with our approach is given in Figure 14. Here, the transform ratio with the definition
amounts to 7, whereas in [4], only a structure with a transform ratio of 4 was designed.
For the design of the transition, a quantity
is computed, where
where
leading here to
4. SIW horn antenna elements
Figure 15, bottom, shows the matching behavior of this arrangement. The reflection factor remains mainly below −15 dB; the structure may be a good alternative to the transition in Figure 11. The back-to-back structure was also built and measured successfully and was then combined with two radiating apertures shown in Figure 16. On the left the transition is combined with a simple open SIW and a short parallel-plate section. On the right an additional stepwise widening is applied. This is realized with two dielectric bars which are glued on the top and bottom side of the parallel-plate section where the metallization was removed before at these areas. As shown in the inset in Figure 16, the upper dielectric bar is metallized at the top and at the left side and analogously the lower bar to get a symmetric aperture with a height of 3.5 mm.
For the characterization of such structures with an end-fire radiation, we use CST Microwave Studio (time domain solver) at the moment, because it is still difficult with our integral equation framework to handle structures with finite dielectric layers to one side [5].
Figure 17 shows left the simulated matching behavior of the two structures. With the simple open SIW, the matching is still very poor as expected (blue line), whereas with the additional widening, the reflection factor remains below −10 dB for a large frequency range. However, despite of the additional widening, we still get a rather strong backward radiation as illustrated in Figure 17, right. The structures were manufactured and measured afterward showing the matching behavior in Figure 18 with the screenshots of the network analyzer. Similar as the simulated results, the simple structure with open SIW shows a poor matching around −5 dB up to the dip around 33.8 GHz, whereas the structure with widening shows a good matching mainly below −10 dB over the whole measured frequency range. Despite of the good matching behavior and further options to reduce the backward radiation, the stepwise widening is difficult to fabricate, even in the case it is designed with via wholes like the feeding SIW.
SIW horn antennas have already been studied for a longer time; typically they suffer from the substrate to the air transition which leads to larger reflections and backside radiation especially with thin substrates as we have seen with the open SIW aperture in Figure 16. In [9], a better matching and bandwidth enhancement of such kind of antennas is achieved with several parallel-plate sections in front of the origin antenna. However, the problem with the large backside radiation is only slightly reduced or not at all; typically, a good matching is achieved but simultaneously with a large backside radiation and vice versa. Some further improvements are made in [10] using transitions with a saw-tooth geometry. But for a good performance, the aperture width must be typically larger than one free space wavelength; thus, an application within a typical phased array arrangement requiring an element distance around
In contrast to the parallel-plate configurations in [9, 10] or the widening in Figure 16, right, for a better matching of SIW horn antennas, we use in a further study a (rectangular) ringslot to improve the matching behavior and bandwidth together with a reduction of the backside radiation. Figure 19 shows the structure with the rectangular ringslot located with the distance
The dependence of the matching behavior with regard to
The structure in Figure 19 has then been transformed into SIW technology and combined with the microstrip to SIW transition of Figure 11 with the substrate thickness 2.5 mm. This leads to the structure in Figure 21. The slot width in the lower and upper metallization amounts to 0.3 mm; the via separation near the slot was reduced to 0.72 mm. In the region of the feeding via, the SIW has a width of 3.5 mm as in Figure 11 (center to center of the vias) and is then increased by a smooth taper to 4.1 mm.
The vias close to the slot are modeled with a round cross section, but the differences compared with a quadratic cross section are negligible.
Figure 22 shows the matching behavior simulated with CST. We can see that the reflection factor is even below −15 dB in the range from 30 to 40 GHz.
Finally, Figure 18 shows the antenna patterns derived with CST MWS. Especially by hands of the 3D pattern, we can observe that the overall backside radiation is very low. A similar antenna element like in Figure 21 was already built, but in the microstrip-to-SIW transition, the feeding via is connected with the bottom ground plane like in Figure 9 leading therefore to a (desired) smaller bandwidth of about 2 GHz around the center frequency 35 GHz well suited for the project in [12] mentioned in context with the leaky wave antenna in Figures 6 and 7. The fabricated elements show a similar antenna pattern than in Figure 23 and are already tested in a phased array arrangement.
5. Conclusions
This chapter comprises the application of an integral equation framework to the analysis and design of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) components and antennas. For SIW circuits, microstrip to SIW transitions, and slot antennas, only the vias must be considered for the discretization of the SIWs in many cases, whereas radiating slots or antipads are modeled with magnetic surface currents. The computational performance and accuracy are significantly improved by a subdivision of the Cartesian wavenumber plane, integration path deformations, an asymptotic subtraction technique, as well as extended quadrature methods. The introduction of special SIW ports, field monitoring, and compact SIW absorbers allows an effective S-parameter extraction and power balance control also in combination with microstrip ports. For SIWs with larger thickness, broadband microstrip-to-SIW transitions have been designed based on a feed via with pad/antipad combination and a two-stage ridged-SIW structure. The latter was combined with an end-fire horn antenna based on a stepwise widening and was successfully built and measured. But the best radiation properties could be obtained with a combination of a SIW with a rectangular ringslot and a dielectric rod showing both broadband behavior and a small backward radiation. This structure is already tested within different array arrangements for a MIMO radar using a transition with feed via connected to the lower ground and smaller bandwidth, whereas a broadband version is used in near future for an airborne synthetic aperture radar.
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