A novel ridge substrate integrated waveguide antenna for WLAN application

A novel ridge substrate integrated waveguide slot array antenna for WLAN application is proposed and designed. In order to make substrate integrated waveguide work at lower frequency, a wide ridge which is made of two linear metallic via arrays and a metallic strip on the top of metallic via arrays is inserted in the longitudinal centerline of a substrate integrated waveguide. The wide ridge is equivalent to a solid metallic ridge. Based on the equivalent width analytical formula of substrate integrated waveguide, the calculating method and formula of equivalent ridge width are given in the paper. Two longitudinal slots are cut on the top of ridge substrate integrated waveguide to form an antenna for WLAN application. With the help of electromagnetic simulation software, the antenna is designed. The designed results show that the central frequency of the antenna is 5.2GHz, -10dB return loss bandwidth is from 5.12GHz to 5.345GHz, the maximal gain at 5.25GHz is 17.017dB, very suitable to WLAN application.