A Compact Wideband Millimeter-Wave Beam-Scanning Antenna Array for Industry 4.0 and Beyond Applications

In this paper, a compact wideband series-fed 8-element linear antenna array is designed that covers the entire unlicensed 60 GHz band from 57–71 GHz. The linear 1 ˟ 8 array has a simulated −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 35.21% (50.53 to 72.13 GHz). The peak realized gain of 8-element array is 13.3 dBi at 60.5 GHz. The gain variation is less than 1 dB from 57–66 GHz and the overall gain is above 11.5 dBi up to 71 GHz. Side-lobe levels are below −10 dB in both E and H-planes, with low cross-polarization levels. The proposed array also manifests frequency-dependent beam-scanning in the elevation plane (y-z plane) from −10° to +35°. The proposed array is suitable for millimeter-wave industrial applications which require high bandwidth and multi-gigabits-per-second data rate. The designed array can work on various 60 GHz communication protocols such as IEEE 802.11ad, IEEE 802.11ay, IEEE 802.15.3c, Wireless HD and ECMA-387.