A Novel Substrate-Integrated Corrugated Metallic Surface for Millimeter-Wave Waveguide and High-Gain Antenna Applications

In this article, a novel kind of substrate-integrated corrugated metallic surface (SI-CMS) is proposed. The structure consists of massive subwavelength cells periodically arranged on one layer of dielectric substrate. The proposed SI-CMS cell consists of upper and bottom metal layers to be connected by periodical metal vias as an electric wall in the vertical direction. The key novelty of this structure lies in two aspects. First, the SI-CMS cells achieve transmission characteristics extremely similar to those of typical periodic grooves 3D CMS cells on a planar substrate and retain a high power handling capacity. Second, the planar structure of the SI-CMS holds several unique advantages of low cost, lightweight, low profile and easy fabrication, thus effectively addressing a few difficulties in fabrication and integration. Based on the SI-CMS cell, a millimeter-wave waveguide and a high gain millimeter-wave leaky-wave antenna (LWA) are proposed. The LWA using the sinusoidally-modulated reactance surface (SMRS) has a high average gain of 20.0 dBi and scanning range from 37.5º to 69.5º within the frequency range of 26.5-30.0 GHz. Prototypes of the proposed SI-CMS waveguide and high-gain LWA are finally fabricated and tested, and it has been revealed that the theoretical calculation, simulation and measurement are found in good agreement.