MTM- and SIW-Inspired Bowtie Antenna Loaded with AMC for 5G mm-Wave Applications

Abstract

This paper investigates a feasible configuration of slotted bowtie antenna based on MTM and SIW properties for 5G millimeter-wave applications. To realize the proposed slotted bowtie antenna in a compact dimension with high performances, the MTM and SIW concepts are implemented by applying the trapezoidal slots on the top surface of the antenna and metallic via holes through the substrate layer connecting the top surface to the ground plane. The antenna has been fed with a simple microstip-line which is connected to a waveguide-port. It is shown that the slotted bowtie antenna with a small dimension of 30 $\times$ 16 $\times$ 0.8 mm3 operates over a measured wideband of 32–34.6 GHz with the fractional bandwidth, average gain, and radiation efficiency of 7.8%, 3.2 dBi, and 50%, respectively. To improve the antenna's performance, the artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) properties have been employed on the ground plane by loading vertical and linear slots with various lengths. The AMC slots are aligned under the trapezoidal slots on the top surface to transfer the maximum electromagnetic signals to them for optimum radiation. The proposed method enlarges the antenna’s effective aperture area, keeping constant its physical dimensions. The proposed AMC-loaded antenna covers wider frequency range of 30–37 GHz in measurement, which corresponds to 21% fractional bandwidth. The average experimental gain and radiation efficiency have been increased to 5.5 dBi and 66.5%, respectively, which illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed AMC-loaded antenna. The results confirm that the proposed slotted bowtie antenna with advantages of compact dimension, wide bandwidth, high gain and efficiency, low profile, being cost-effective, simple design, and easy fabrication process, which makes it applicable for mass production, can be a good candidate for 5G millimeter-wave applications.