A Wideband Magneto-Electric Dipole Ridge Gap Waveguide Slotted Array Antenna

A wideband magneto-electric (ME) dipole ridge gap waveguide (RGW) waveguide slotted array(WSA) antenna working at Ka band is presented in this paper. That antenna is designed with four layers: ME dipole layer, backed cavity layer, coupling layer, and waveguide network layer. Since this RGW technology does not require electrical contact between the different metal layers, the mechanical fabrication complexity are decreased. A transition from standard Ka-band waveguide port to RGW transmission line is designed, while a waveguide network is utilized as the power divider. The asymmetric RGW is also employed to have non uniform patterns. To validate the performance of the designed antennas, a 16*8 array is designed in Ka band. Simulations of the whole array antenna demonstrate the wide bandwidth of the reflection coefficient, meanwhile, antenna efficiency is about 88% in the whole frequency band with maximum gain 30dB.