Wideband Ku-Band Antennas Using Multi-Layer Direct Digital Manufacturing

Design and performance of a fully-printed Ku-band aperture coupled patch antenna manufactured by making use of a direct digital manufacturing (DDM) approach that integrates fused deposition of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) thermoplastics with in-situ micro-dispensing of conductive silver paste (CB028) is reported. Microstrip line characterizations demonstrate that the microstrip line feed loss of the antenna is minimized by printing ABS in parallel with the line directions. A wideband (20%) performance is achieved by employing a multilayer printing approach. Compared to existing work in literature, the presented antenna stands out as being fully-printed, operating within the Ku-band, and exhibiting high radiation efficiency (6.5 dB gain) with wide bandwidth performance.