Additively manufactured trapezoidal grooves for wideband and high gain Ku-band antenna

Grooves around aperture antennas are known to be instrumental in obtaining directive antenna patterns. The shapes of the grooves are often restricted to rectangular or triangular due to manufacturing difficulties in traditional metal machining, and because of this reason, the effect of groove shape on antenna performance is often overlooked. The aim of this study is to analyze different groove shapes with the help of additive manufacturing. Waveguide slot fed, dual cavity aperture antenna with grooves is designed and the effect of groove shapes on antenna performance is studied at Ku band. Two antennas with and without grooves are built using 3D printing technology. Measured antenna performance reveals 5 GHz bandwidth covering 10 to 15 GHz for Ku-band satellite communications and part of the X-band applications. Proposed antenna achieves 13.25 dBi peak gain at 14 GHz and the gain is better than 11.25 dBi over the entire Ku-band uplink and downlink frequency bands.