A low profile planar horn antenna for THz applications

In this paper, a low profile planar horn antenna based on MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) processing is proposed for THz applications. The stepped waveguide is adopted as the main radiator of the planar horn, and two side slots with subwavelength in depth are introduced to improve the gain of the main radiator. By tuning the dimension parameters of both side slots and stepped waveguide, the impedance matching of the planar horn is well improved. The proposed antenna is designed based on silicon-based MEMS processing. A prototype of planar horn antenna is simulated at 640GHz band. The simulation results exhibit a frequency bandwidth of 12.5% for S11 less than −15 dB, a maximum gain of 13.1dBi at 670GHz, and a 2.8dB gain bandwidth of 80GHz (12.5%).