A Novel Heatsink Antenna Array

A novel heatsink antenna array on a low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) substrate is presented in this paper. Based on three-dimensional (3-D) printing technology, a fin-shaped heatsink structure with several rectangular air cavities in the bottom base is designed to form the step-profiled horn antenna. The heatsink is soldered on the LTCC substrate, and the feeding network consists of numerous metallic vias which provides a low-resistance thermal path to transfer the heat from chip to heatsink. The thermal performance is significantly improved by this means. As for the radiation performance, the heatsink antenna array is fabricated and the measured results indicate that more than 5 GHz of 10 dB impedance bandwidth, and 18.1 dBi of broadside gain at 60 GHz are obtained.