Systematic Synthesis of Fully-planar Antennas Based on Metamaterial-enhanced SIWs for 5G Communications

A fully numerical process for the systematic design of fully-planar antennas for 5G communications frequencies is pre-sented, utilizing the metamaterial-enhanced SIW as the basis platform. A combined modal analysis and wave propagation Finite Element modeling is proposed for the accurate design of the waveguiding structure towards its leakage loss minimization. Based on this robust numerical scheme, two different types of fully-planar antennas are designed. A leaky-wave fully-planar two-slot antenna and an H-plane end-fire sectoral horn antenna. Both structures are viable candidates for integration in 5G communications platforms, exhibiting attractive characteristics such as optimized gain and bandwidth, low cost, compactness and ease-of-fabrication.