ABS-based 3D Printed Bowtie Antenna Fed by Planar Marchand Balun for Wireless Communication

One of the manufacturing technologies which have been widely penetrating many fields is a 3D printing technique. With the growth of materials science, the technology has also been implemented to manufacturing radio frequency (RF) and wireless communication devices. This paper proposes design, realization, and characterization of a planar Marchand balun fed bowtie antenna manufactured by a 3D printing technology. An acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) material is used with the technology as a dielectric substrate, while a conductive coating paint is applied as conducting materials for antenna realization. The ABS-based dielectric substrate has the thickness of 0.8 mm with the relative permittivity of 2.6. The proposed bowtie antenna, fed by a planar Marchand balun, is designed to operates at the frequency of 2.4 GHz, which is globally available and unlicensed as a standard range for wireless communication. The characterization results demonstrate the effective functionality of proposed bowtie antenna at the frequency of 2.4 GHz with the impedance bandwidth of 800 MHz within the frequency of 2.03 GHz to 2.83 GHz. It can be inferred that the proposed bowtie antenna emerges as well-suited for diverse wireless communication applications.