A New Wide Band and Compact H-Plane Horn Antenna Based on Groove Gap Waveguide Technology

In this article, a new H-plane horn antenna is designed using gap waveguide (GW) technology. This antenna consists of a semicircular groove GW (GGW) partially filled by a dielectric to provide uniform field distribution across the antenna aperture in a very compact range. In the proposed structure, the antenna aperture is loaded by an elliptical dielectric which collimates the antenna beam in E-plane resulting in gain enhancement. The designed antenna shows proper radiation performance in both E- and H-planes with low sidelobe levels (SLLs). A sample antenna is designed and simulated for Ku band and a prototype is fabricated. For the designed antenna, the impedance bandwidth (
$S_{11} < -10$
dB) of 49% covering the whole Ku-band is obtained. Likewise, the obtained SSL and gain are −10 dB and 14–17 dBi, respectively, over the operating bandwidth. In comparison with state-of-the-art designs, the proposed antenna introduces higher gain with lower size.