Size reduction of cavity-backed slot antennas

Abstract

A technique for reducing the dimensions of the cavity of a cavity-backed slot antenna (CBSA) is presented, which facilitates proper fabrication and integration of miniaturized slot antennas on multilayer substrates. This is accomplished by replacing the solid metal around the traditional slot antennas with a specific metallic pattern that can be viewed as a series of parallel strip lines placed around the slot antenna. This metallic pattern is then modified by designing the parallel strips in a compact fashion to reduce the overall antenna dimensions and obtain a reduced-size CBSA. It is shown that, for a simple straight slot antenna, the overall occupied volume of the modified cavity backing the slot antenna can be reduced by more than 65 % without affecting the high radiation efficiency of the antenna. A number of traditional cavity backed slot antennas and the proposed modified CBSAs are designed, fabricated, and measured. The reduced-size CBSAs show a very low input VSWR, low cross-polarized radiation levels, and high radiation efficiency. Despite their small ground plane size, the proposed cavity backed slot antennas have front-to-back ratio (FTBR) values in the range of 6-7 dB.