High-Efficiency, High-Gain, Broadband Quasi-Yagi Antenna and Its Array for 60-GHz Wireless Communications

This paper introduces a high-efficiency, high-gain, broadband quasi-Yagi antenna, and its four-element array for use in 60-GHz wireless communications. The antenna was fed by a microstrip-to-slotline transition consisting of a curved microstripline and a circular slot to allow broadband characteristics. A corrugated ground plane was employed as a reflector to improve the gains in the low-frequency region of the operation bandwidth, and consequently, to reduce variation. The single antenna yielded an impedance bandwidth of 49 to 69 GHz for $|S_{11}|$ <-10dB and a gain of >12.0 dBi while the array exhibited a bandwidth of 52 to 68 GHz and a gain greater than 15.0 dBi. Both proposed designs had small gain variations (${\pm}0.5$ dBi) and high radiation efficiency (>95%) in the 60-GHz bands. The features of the proposed antenna were validated by designing, fabricating, and testing a scaled-up configuration of the single antenna at the 15-GHz band. The measurements resulted in an impedance bandwidth of 13.0 to 17.5 GHz for $|S_{11}|$ <-10dB, a gain of 10.1 to 13.2 dBi, and radiation efficiency in excess of 88% within this bandwidth. Additionally, the 15-GHz antenna yielded quite symmetric radiation profiles in both E- and H-planes, with a high front-to-back ratio.