Asea Brown Boveri Ltd. (ABB) Award 2016 – Marc Esquius Morote
© 2016 Marc Esquius Morote
Horn Antennas and Dual-Polarized Circuits in Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) Technology, EPFL thesis n°6421 (2014).
Thesis director: Prof. J. R. Mosig
“For the development of the first miniaturized horn antenna, which opens the door to integrated portable systems for the new telecommunication bands between 12 and 30 Gigahertz.”
The Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) technology is a very promising candidate to provide widespread commercial solutions for modern communications systems. Its main advantage is the possibility to integrate passive/active components and antennas in the same substrate by using standard manufacturing processes.
However, the production of low-cost SIW devices is inherently linked to commercially available substrates and fabrication methods. These constraints limit the frequency range of operation of SIW antennas and the possibility to created integrated waveguide dealing with several polarizations. This PhD thesis is focused on the implementation of SIW horn antennas since horn antennas are widely employed in many applications but they strongly suffer from the aforementioned problems when implemented in SIW technology.
A novel and fully integrated SIW horn design to widely enlarge the frequency bands where these antennas can be used as well as a new SIW topology able to carry multiple polarizations are the main breakthrough concepts presented in this thesis. These innovative designs are all based on standard PCB technology in order to favor the compatibility with existing systems and to lower their cost. This opens the door towards new SIW components that can increase the capacity, robustness and compactness of modern communication systems.
