Bandwidth Investigation on Half-Height Pin in Ridge Gap Waveguide

Journal article, 2018

Gap waveguide is a promising transmission structure, especially for millimeter-wave (mmW) and terahertz applications. It does not require conductive connection between the upper and the lower plates, which makes this technology gain advantages over conventional rectangular waveguides and substrate integrated waveguides in an mmW and terahertz regime. Different fabrication methods for gap waveguides should be employed for different frequency bands applied, such as molding, milling, die forming, electrical discharge machining, microelectromechanical systems, and 3-D printing. Therefore, different pin forms used in gap waveguides are required to match the applied fabrication methods. In this paper, a new pin form, the half-height-pin form, in gap waveguides is proposed for reducing the fabrication cost, and its stopband characteristics are investigated and compared with the previous full-height pins in gap waveguides at the V  -band. A device of a double-ridged gap waveguide with two 90° bends for verifying the stopband characteristic analysis of the new pin form has been designed and manufactured. The measured data confirm our analysis and simulations.