High-gain and wide-bandwidth filtering planar antenna array-based solely on resonators

This paper presents a new approach for the design of high-gain and wide-bandwidth planar antenna arrays. It is based on the coupling matrix theory which allows the design of the arrays using all-resonator structures. The parameters of the matrix offer the flexibility of achieving a controllable bandwidth. They also introduce a frequency filtering functionality into the arrays which can remove the need to place a bandpass filter after the arrays at the very front end of a communication system. The new approach has been applied to using novel topologies to form two wideband 4 × 4 planar antenna arrays utilizing rectangular waveguide cavity resonators operated at X-band frequencies. The first topology is seventh order and based on 39 resonators configured in two waveguide-layers; that is one layer for the feed resonators and one layer for the radiating resonators. The second topology is fourth order based on 25 resonators configured only in a single waveguide-layer. Fabrication and measurements have been performed, showing very good agreement with the simulations.