Propagation Characteristics of Honeycomb Structures Used in mm-Wave Radial Line Slot Antennas

Tung NGUYEN  Rushanthi JAYAWARDENE  Kimio SAKURAI  Jiro HIROKAWA  Makoto ANDO  Manuel SIERRA CASTAÑER  Osamu AMANO  Shuichi KOREEDA  Takaomi MATSUZAKI  Yukio KAMATA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E97-B   No.6   pp.1139-1147
Publication Date: 2014/06/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.E97.B.1139
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Antennas and Propagation
Keyword: 
satellite applications,  honeycomb structure,  radial line slot antenna,  millimeter wave,  

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Summary: 
Honeycomb structures are widely used in aerospace industry because of the lightweight and durable properties they provide. Here we propose to use a honeycomb core as the wave guiding structure in Radial Line Slot Antennas (RLSAs). This paper quantifies the propagation characteristics, especially the loss due to the honeycomb. At 32GHz, by choosing the proper cell size, both good isotropy and reasonably low effective dielectric constants are realized with the honeycomb as a spacer in a radial line waveguide. To estimate the material loss factor, several methods are compared and a factor of about 0.014∼0.018dB/mm is predicted and measured. A fabricated 90cm diameter honeycomb RLSA suffers about a 3.5∼5dB loss, which coincides with the estimates using the predicted loss factor.