A compact & high gain series array planar antenna for 60-GHz WPAN applications

In this paper, a high gain and compact series array antenna was designed for future 60-GHz WPAN applications. Two-layer substrate technology was exploited to achieve the almost 15% fractional bandwidth needed to cover the frequency range 57-66 GHz. The design is made to have 4 elements on each of the two substrate layers, to improve a pre-designed structure with lesser number of elements. A total of 17.6% fractional bandwidth was achieved with a better overall return loss and a better confinement and interference suppression at the lower part of the band. The gain was significantly improved by 2.7-4.4 dB, pushing the final gain up to 11.8-13.2 dB, yielding a 3 dB average enhancement as a result of a more confined radiation pattern vertical angle. That is besides being passive, keeping the size and substrate characteristics the same, and possessing a an even better overall efficiency with an average of 92%. This implies that the design can be more competitive with its active counterparts and even higher recommended and convenient for the application it is designed to serve since it is simple and very compact.