Millimeter-Wave Printed Dipole Array Antenna Loaded with a Low-Cost Dielectric Lens for High-Gain Applications

In this paper, two different millimeter-wave printed dipole array (PDA) antenna prototypes for high-gain applications are proposed. The antenna prototypes are designed, simulated, fabricated, and experimentally tested. A good agreement between the simulated and measured results is achieved. Calculated results show that those antenna prototypes can operate from 51.5 to 74 GHz with a fractional impedance bandwidth of 35.9%. Due to limitations in the measurement facilities, the antenna return loss is measured up to 65 GHz only. At 60 GHz, the two antenna prototypes have maximum realized peak gain of 14.0 dBi and 23.29 dBi, respectively, with a gain variation of 3 dBi and 1.4 dBi, respectively, across the whole frequency band of interest with stable radiation patterns over the operating band. The proposed PDA antenna prototypes achieve good side lobe suppression, excellent front-to-back ratio in both E- and H-planes and low cross-polarization levels over the entire frequency range.