Novel Substrate-Independent Broadband Micromachined Antennas For Mm-Wave Cognitive Radio Applications

In this paper, novel U-slot and Yagi-Uda micromachined patch antennas were designed based on the "micromachined elevation" technique to improve the performance of mm-wave cognitive radios in terms of gain, weight and bandwidth. The elevated antennas were fed with a micromachined probe connected to a CPW line on top of a high epsilon(r) substrate. By elevating the antenna from the high epsilon(r) substrate, high-performance antenna designs can coexist with compact feed networks in 3D module configurations. A 10dB impedance bandwidth of 31% and 25% were obtained for the U-slot and Yagi designs, respectively.