80GHz Automotive Radar Antenna Module Fabricated Using Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) has shown great promise in providing designers and engineers with methods to produce geometrically optimized components for structural, weight, and thermal performance. However, wireless communications systems have not seen broad AM adoption due to limitations in material performance, manufacturing scalability, resolution, surface finish, and/or cost. The specific method of Additive Manufacturing demonstrated in this work is Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM), a scalable 3D printing technology that produces high-resolution, high-quality surface finish components with high purity. ECAM is especially valuable for mmWave application due to its ability to create high-resolution features directly on RF circuit boards. This paper illustrates the effectiveness of ECAM for the fabrication of a novel high performance automotive radar antenna that would not be possible to build using conventional techniques. A unique antenna was designed, prototyped, and experimentally validated, demonstrating that the ECAM process is a reliable method of manufacturing complex 3D antennas.