Selective Laser Sintering of Waveguide Devices for 5G and 6G Communication Systems

This article presents an overview of different waveguide devices implemented by additive manufacturing using the Selective Laser Sintering technique showing high performances for both terrestrial and space applications. Firstly, two types of mode two converters will be exposed. These broadband devices without resonant behaviour and without high electromagnetic field densities are especially well-suited to cope with the two main problems of additive manufacturing, i.e., the accuracy and the surface roughness. The first one is a T$E_{10}$ rectangular waveguide mode to T$E_{01}$ circular waveguide mode flared-type converter in Q-band and the second one is a T$E_{10}$ rectangular waveguide mode to T$M_{01}$ circular waveguide mode converter in Ku-band. Secondly, a compact ortho-mode transducer in Ku-band is presented with tested results similar to those obtained by milling or spark erosion suited for satellite applications. In all cases the experimental results of the prototypes are discussed in detail. In addition, the issues related to the orientation of the parts inside the building chamber and other undesirable effects such as spikes due to manufacturing asymmetries, are shared with the scientific community in other to contribute to the development of the additive manufacturing in microwave engineering.