Alico Systems has developed low cost flat panel antennas using the substrate integrated waveguide technology coupled with slot array antenna apertures. The antenna takes advantage of the low loss nature of the waveguide and printed circuit manufacturing process to offer high performance with a loss cost solution. The Ka-band antenna shown below is a right-handed, circular polarized substrate integrated waveguide slot array antenna covering the frequency range of 34 to 36 GHz. The antenna implements a series-fed power distribution to achieve low side lobe levels. The gain of the antenna is 23 dBi and the beamwidth is 10° vertically and 4° horizontally, with a typical sidelobe suppression of 15 dB. The antenna shows close to 50% antenna aperture efficiency and the highest gain in the class. In addition, the antenna shows good return loss and up to 7% bandwidth. The RF interface is a standard female 2.92 mm connector, however, a WR-28 waveguide is offered under a different model number.
