METAL EMBEDDED ARTIFICIAL GRID DIELECTRIC RESONATOR ANTENNA ARRAYS AND SIW FEEDING MECHANISMS FOR MM-WAVE APPLICATIONS

One of the major challenges in deploying future millimeter-wave, wideband communication systems is the designing of wide impedance bandwidth, high gain and high efficiency front end antennas. Conventional metal antennas have disadvantages like narrow frequency bandwidth, high conductor loss, and low radiation efficiency which make them inadequate for such systems. Therefore, this thesis investigates the future potentials of the low loss (i.e., no conductor loss) and high efficiency artificial grid dielectric resonator antennas for millimeter-wave applications using deep X-Ray lithography (DXRL). In the first section, a new design approach is introduced, to enhance the feed versatility and design characteristics of the previously explored grid dielectric resonator antennas (GDRAs). For instance, the implementation of the multi-layer GDRAs technique has improved the impedance bandwidth performance of normal GDRAs from 5.5% to ≥12%. Secondly, the integration of the various feeding techniques such as conventional coplanar waveguide (CPW), capacitive CPW and inductive CPW feeds are successfully applied to GDRAs for mm-wave applications, which was previously limited to microstrip feed-line only due to grid to feed-line shorting issues. The power distribution networks are always very crucial in defining antenna array performance. The feed structures like microstrip corporate feed and series feed are not practical at millimeter-wave frequencies due to the high conductor and radiation losses. Therefore, in the second section, the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) feeding mechanisms for one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) planar arrays are explored. Various wide-band, low amplitude and phase imbalance, SIW parallel feed networks are developed at 24 and 60 GHz for the large GDRA arrays integration. In the third section, the X-ray lithographic procedure for the development of two different monolithic GDRA array layers is described: i) solid template frame GDRA array layer; ii) and strip template frame GDRA ...