60-GHz patch antennas and arrays on LTCC with embedded-cavity substrates

The design is presented of aperture-coupled microstrip line-fed patch antennas (ACMPAs) and 4 x 4 planar arrays on Ferro A6-S low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) substrate operating in the 60-GHz frequency band. In addition to the traditional ACMPA design, air cavities processed inside the LTCC substrate are used to improve the bandwidth and gain of the antennas. The arrays are excited through the microstrip-line feed networks using quarter-wave matched T-junctions and using Wilkinson power dividers. The results show that ACMPAs and arrays can be fabricated with a standard LTCC process even or the millimeter-wave region. Good agreement is achieved between simulations and measurements. The measured S-parameters indicate impedance bandwidths of 9.5% and 5.8% for the array elements with and without an embedded cavity. The measured maximum gains for the 16-element patch arrays (with and without cavity) are 18.2 and 15.7 dBi, respectively.