A novel LTCC differentially Fed UWB antenna for the 60 GHz band

In this paper a novel differentially fed Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) antenna in low-temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) technology to be used in the 60 GHz band for integrated RF front-ends is presented. The antenna is based on the aperture stacked patch fed via H-shaped aperture to achieve more than 10 GHz operational bandwidth. The antenna is fed by a parallel-wire transmission line which enables the antenna to be directly integrated with differential Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs). To alleviate influence of the surface waves (efficiently excited in LTCC material due to its high dielectric constant) on the antenna radiation and realize uni-directional radiation patterns, a dedicated shield is added to the antenna. The measured results of the shielded antenna showed that the antenna has an operational bandwidth from 51 GHz to over 65 GHz, the gain is about 3.5-8 dBi, and -5 dB beamwidth is about +/- 30 degrees. The measurement results also demonstrated that the shield indeed improves the antenna impedance bandwidth, gain, and radiation patterns substantially.