A convenient circuit model for millimeter-wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) corporate feed for dielectric resonator antenna arrays

Millimeter wave and terahertz systems are becoming increasingly important in several commercial scientific and military applications. The wide range of applications in areas such as remote sensing, radio astronomy, plasma diagnostics, and radar and communication systems have demanded low- noise receivers from 30 GHz to over 1THz [1]. At millimeter–wave range of frequencies printed (metallic) planar antennas suffer from conductor and dielectric losses (radiator and feeding structure) that could be significant [2], which degrade the overall antenna radiation efficiency, especially when the number of antenna elements in array arrangement increases. As a low cost high radiation efficiency planar antenna system, substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW)-fed dielectric resonator (DRA) antenna, is presented in [3], which is a good candidate for millimeter wave applications. In this paper, a generic simple circuit model for 1×M SIW-parallel-fed DRA linear array is presented as a fast method for the analysis and optimization of the larger arrays. This circuit model provides good estimates for the antenna return loss and radiation pattern characteristics. It is based on N-port circuit analysis of the antenna system.