A patch antenna array for 60-GHz WPAN based on polypropylene composite substrate
A microstrip line-fed patch antenna array is developed based on a novel PCB/epoxy/polypropylene/epoxy composite substrate for 60-GHz WPAN applications. The substrate features high RF performance as PTFE or LTCC, while the cost and manufacturing complexity is much lower than the above two materials, and therefore provides a great convenience for the integration of antennas with a transceiver front-end at 60-GHz band. This paper introduces the fabrication process of the substrate in detail, and the 2×2 and 4×4 demo patch antenna arrays fabricated on the substrate are developed. Measurement results showed that the peak gains of the two antenna arrays are 11.7dBi and 15.4dBi, respectively, while the bandwidth is at least 5.6GHz, which agree well with the simulation results.