Microwave Millimetric Antennas

Abstract This paper provides a discussion on the different

microwave antennas, including reflectors, refractors,
radiators and hybrids. Their uses will be discussed together
with their characteristics such as focus distance, gain and
bandwidth. This paper will also provide an overview on
multiple antenna techniques, MIMO, beam forming and
diversity.

Keywords microwave millimetric antennas, reflector

antenna, refractor antenna, radiator antenna, MIMO, beam
forming
I. INTRODUCTION
With the continually increasing demand for bandwidth, and
the development of components for higher and higher
frequencies, millimeter-wave systems are finding numerous
applications of a commercial nature rather than being limited to
military and scientific applications only. Since active device
performance deteriorates with increasing frequency, the
performance of the antenna becomes critical as we go higher
into the millimeter-wave band. [1] UHF and microwave
antennas are the types of antenna that use this millimeter-wave
band.
Microwave transmission refers to the technology of
transmitting information or energy by the use of electromagnetic
waves whose wavelengths are conveniently measured in small
numbers of centimetre; these are called microwaves. This part of
the radio spectrum ranges across frequencies of roughly 1.0
gigahertz (GHz) to 30 GHz. These correspond to wavelengths
from 30 centimeters down to 1.0 cm.
Microwaves are widely used for point-to-point
communications because their small wavelength allows
conveniently-sized antennas to direct them in narrow beams,
which can be pointed directly at the receiving antenna. This
allows nearby microwave equipment to use the same
frequencies without interfering with each other, as lower
frequency radio waves do. Another advantage is that the high
frequency of microwaves gives the microwave band a very large
information-carrying capacity; the microwave band has a
bandwidth 30 times that of all the rest of the radio spectrum
below it. A disadvantage is that microwaves are limited to line
of sight propagation; they cannot pass around hills or mountains
as lower frequency radio waves can. [2]
II. DIFFERENT MICROWAVE ANTENNAS
A) Reflectors

An antenna reflector is a device that reflects electromagnetic

waves. Antenna reflectors can exist as a standalone device for
redirecting radio frequency (RF) energy, or can be integrated as
part of an antenna assembly. The function of a standalone
reflector is to redirect electro-magnetic (EM) energy, generally
in the radio wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Reflector antennas are typically used when very high gain (e.g.
satellite transmission or reception) or a very narrow main beam
(e.g. secure communication) is required. Gain is improved and
the main beam narrowed with increase in the reflector size.
Large reflectors are however difficult to simulate as they
become very large in terms of wavelengths. [3] Common
reflectors include parabolic and cassegrain antenna.
A parabolic (or paraboloid or paraboloidal) reflector (or dish
or mirror) is a reflective surface used to collect or project energy
such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a
circular paraboloid, that is, the surface generated by a parabola
revolving around its axis. The parabolic reflector transforms an
incoming plane wave traveling along the axis into a spherical
wave converging toward the focus. Conversely, a spherical wave
generated by a point source placed in the focus is reflected into a
plane wave propagating as a collimated beam along the axis. [4]

Figure 1. Parabolic Antenna

Cassegrain antenna, on the other hand, is a parabolic antenna

in which the feed antenna is mounted at or behind the surface of
the concave main parabolic reflector dish and is aimed at a
smaller convex secondary reflector suspended in front of the
primary reflector. The beam of radio waves from the feed
illuminates the secondary reflector, which reflects it back to the
main reflector dish, which reflects it forward again to form the
desired beam. The Cassegrain design is widely used in parabolic
antennas, particularly in large antennas such as those in satellite
ground stations, radio telescopes, and communication satellites.
[5]

transparent. Light hitting the zone plate will diffract around the
opaque zones. The zones can be spaced so that the diffracted
light constructively interferes at the desired focus, creating an
image there. [7]

Figure 2. Cassegrain antenna

B) Refractors
Refractors are antennas that causes refraction to the
radiowaves. Common refractors include lens and Fresnel zone
plate.
Lens antenna is an antenna whose directivity pattern is a
result of the difference between the phase velocity of
propagation of an electromagnetic wave in air and that in the
lens material. It is used in radar and metering equipment that
operates in the centimeter wavelength range. A lens antenna
consists of a lens proper and of a feed. The shape of the lens
depends on the refractive index n (the ratio of the phase velocity
of propagation of a radio wave in a vacuum to that in the lens).
A decelerating lens antenna, as in optics, is one for which n > 1.
An accelerating lens antenna (without an optical analogy) is one
for which n < 1. The feed is usually a horn antenna that
generates a spherical wave front or an antenna array that
produces a cylindrical wave front. [6]

Figure 3. Axial choke horn antenna with lens

A zone plate is a device used to focus light or other things

exhibiting wave character. Unlike lenses or curved mirrors
however, zone plates use diffraction instead of refraction or
reflection. Based on analysis by Augustin-Jean Fresnel, they are
sometimes called Fresnel zone plates in his honor. The zone
plate's focusing ability is an extension of the Arago spot
phenomenon caused by diffraction from an opaque disc.
A zone plate consists of a set of radially symmetric rings,
known as Fresnel zones, which alternate between opaque and

Figure 4. Zone Plate

C) Radiators
In a radio antenna, a passive radiator or parasitic element is a
conductive element, typically a metal rod, which is not
electrically connected to anything else. Multielement antennas
such as the Yagi-Uda antenna typically consist of a "driven
element" which is connected to the radio receiver or transmitter
through a feed line, and parasitic elements, which are not. The
purpose of the parasitic elements is to modify the radiation
pattern of the radio waves emitted by the driven element,
directing them in a beam in one direction, increasing the
antenna's directivity (gain). A parasitic element does this by
acting as a passive resonator, something like a guitar's sound
box, absorbing the radio waves from the nearby driven element
and re-radiating them again with a different phase. The waves
from the different antenna elements interfere, strengthening the
antenna's radiation in the desired direction, and cancelling out
the waves in undesired directions. [8] Common radiators
include, horn, cavity and slot.
A horn antenna or microwave horn is an antenna that consists
of a flaring metal waveguide shaped like a horn to direct radio
waves in a beam. Horns are widely used as antennas at UHF and
microwave frequencies, above 300 MHz. They are used as
feeders (called feed horns) for larger antenna structures such as
parabolic antennas, as standard calibration antennas to measure
the gain of other antennas, and as directive antennas for such
devices as radar guns, automatic door openers, and microwave
radiometers. Their advantages are moderate directivity, low
standing wave ratio (SWR), broad bandwidth, and simple
construction and adjustment.

Figure 5. Pyramidal microwave horn antenna

Slot antennas are used typically at frequencies between 300
MHz and 24 GHz. The slot antenna is popular because they can
be cut out of whatever surface they are to be mounted on, and
have radiation patterns that are roughly omnidirectional (similar
to a linear wire antenna, as we'll see). The polarization of the
slot antenna is linear. The slot size, shape and what is behind it
(the cavity) offer design variables that can be used to tune
performance. [9]

D) Hybrids
Hybrid antennas are antenna that combine different kind of
antenna to form a new one. It is usually made to improve the
performance of an antenna especially its gain and directivity.
Common hybrid antennas include Hogg Horn, Cas-Horn, and
Dielguide.
A type of antenna that combines a horn with a parabolic
reflector is the Hogg or horn-reflector antenna, invented by
Alfred C. Beck and Harald T. Friis in 1941 and further
developed by David C. Hogg at Bell labs in 1961. It is also
referred to as the "sugar scoop" due to its characteristic shape. It
consists of a horn antenna with a reflector mounted in the mouth
of the horn at a 45 degree angle so the radiated beam is at right
angles to the horn axis. The reflector is a segment of a parabolic
reflector, and the focus of the reflector is at the apex of the horn,
so the device is equivalent to a parabolic antenna fed off-axis.
The advantage of this design over a standard parabolic
antenna is that the horn shields the antenna from radiation
coming from angles outside the main beam axis, so its radiation
pattern has very small sidelobes. Also, the aperture isn't partially
obstructed by the feed and its supports, as with ordinary frontfed parabolic dishes, allowing it to achieve aperture efficiencies
of 70% as opposed to 55-60% for front-fed dishes. The
disadvantage is that it is far larger and heavier for a given
aperture area than a parabolic dish, and must be mounted on a
cumbersome turntable to be fully steerable. [10]

Figure 6. Rectangular Slot antenna with dimensions a and b.

A practical slot antenna is the cavity-backed slot antenna. The

basic cavity-backed slot antenna is shown in Figure 7 (in a
rectangular cube of size A*B*C). The walls are metallic
(electrically conducting), and the inside is hollow. On one end, a
slot is cut out. The cavity is typically excited by a probe antenna
in the interior of the cavity, which typically is modelled as a
monopole antenna. The exciting monopole antenna is shown in
green. [9]

Figure 8. Holmdel hog-horn antenna

III. MULTIPLE ANTENNA TECHNIQUES

Figure 7. Cavity-backed slot antenna

In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO

(pronounced as "my-moh" or "me-moh"), is the use of multiple
antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve
communication performance. Multiple antennas may be used to
perform smart antenna functions such as spreading the total
transmit power over the antennas to achieve an array gain that
incrementally improves the spectral efficiency (more bits per
second per hertz of bandwidth,) or achieving a diversity gain

that improves the link reliability (reduces fading,) or both.

However, today the term MIMO usually refers to a method for
multiplying the capacity of a radio link by exploiting multipath
propagation.[1] This modern MIMO is an essential element of
wireless communication standards such as IEEE 802.11n (WiFi), IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi), 4G, 3GPP Long Term Evolution,
WiMAX and HSPA+. More recently, MIMO has been applied to
power line communications for 3-wire installations as part of
standard ITU G.hn and specification HomePlug AV2.
MIMO can be sub-divided into three main categories,
precoding, spatial multiplexing or SM, and diversity coding.
Precoding is multi-stream beamforming, in the narrowest
definition. In more general terms, it is considered to be all
spatial processing that occurs at the transmitter. In (singlestream) beamforming, the same signal is emitted from each of
the transmit antennas with appropriate phase and gain weighting
such that the signal power is maximized at the receiver input.
The benefits of beamforming are to increase the received signal
gain - by making signals emitted from different antennas add up
constructively - and to reduce the multipath fading effect. In
line-of-sight propagation, beamforming results in a well-defined
directional pattern. However, conventional beams are not a good
analogy in cellular networks, which are mainly characterized by
multipath propagation. When the receiver has multiple antennas,
the transmit beamforming cannot simultaneously maximize the
signal level at all of the receive antennas, and precoding with
multiple streams is often beneficial. Note that precoding
requires knowledge of channel state information (CSI) at the
transmitter and the receiver.
Spatial multiplexing requires MIMO antenna configuration.
In spatial multiplexing, a high-rate signal is split into multiple
lower-rate streams and each stream is transmitted from a
different transmit antenna in the same frequency channel. If
these signals arrive at the receiver antenna array with
sufficiently different spatial signatures and the receiver has
accurate CSI, it can separate these streams into (almost) parallel
channels. Spatial multiplexing is a very powerful technique for
increasing channel capacity at higher signal-to-noise ratios
(SNR). The maximum number of spatial streams is limited by
the lesser of the number of antennas at the transmitter or
receiver. Spatial multiplexing can be used without CSI at the
transmitter, but can be combined with precoding if CSI is
available. Spatial multiplexing can also be used for
simultaneous transmission to multiple receivers, known as
space-division multiple access or multi-user MIMO, in which
case CSI is required at the transmitter. The scheduling of
receivers with different spatial signatures allows good
separability. [11]
Diversity Coding techniques are used when there is no
channel knowledge at the transmitter. In diversity methods, a
single stream (unlike multiple streams in spatial multiplexing) is
transmitted, but the signal is coded using techniques called
space-time coding. The signal is emitted from each of the

transmit antennas with full or near orthogonal coding. Diversity

coding exploits the independent fading in the multiple antenna
links to enhance signal diversity. Because there is no channel
knowledge, there is no beamforming or array gain from
diversity coding. Diversity coding can be combined with spatial
multiplexing when some channel knowledge is available at the
transmitter.

Figure 9. Example of an antenna for LTE with 2 ports antenna diversity

Beamforming or spatial filtering is a signal processing

technique used in sensor arrays for directional signal
transmission or reception. This is achieved by combining
elements in a phased array in such a way that signals at
particular angles experience constructive interference while
others experience destructive interference. Beamforming can be
used at both the transmitting and receiving ends in order to
achieve spatial selectivity. The improvement compared with
omnidirectional reception/transmission is known as the
receive/transmit gain (or loss).
Beamforming can be used for radio or sound waves. It has
found numerous applications in radar, sonar, seismology,
wireless communications, radio astronomy, acoustics, and
biomedicine. Adaptive beamforming is used to detect and
estimate the signal-of-interest at the output of a sensor array by
means of optimal (e.g., least-squares) spatial filtering and
interference rejection. [12]

Figure 10. Beam Froming