A Wideband and Compact Millimeter-Wave Antenna Array Fed by Printed Ridge Gap Waveguide for 5G Applications

This paper proposes a printed ridge gap waveguide (PRGW)-based 2 × 2 millimeter-wave antenna array with broad bandwidth and compact aperture. A dual-resonance element consisting of a quarter circular and a quarter annular patch is initially designed. Subsequently, to reduce the cross polarization (XP) radiation and enhance the gain of the proposed antenna, a four-element array with symmetric arrangement is developed, leading to a decline in the normalized XP levels from −4.5 to −18.9 dB and from −4.4 to −18.7 dB in the xoz and yoz planes, respectively. In addition, a pair of parasitic shorted half-circular patches is loaded to improve the antenna gain in the high-frequency range. Finally, a PRGW feeding network is designed and applied to provide differential feeding for the planar array. To validate the reflection and radiation performance, an array prototype is fabricated, and experimental verification is conducted. Measurement results show that a −10-dB impedance bandwidth of 14.3% (26.0–30.0 GHz) is realized for the prototype, and an average realized gain of 9.8 dBi with low XP radiation is achieved by the proposed array.