Gain and Bandwidth Enhancement of 3D-Printed Short Backfire Antennas Using Rim Flaring and Iris Matching

In this article, we present new design techniques to improve the gain and impedance bandwidth of short backfire antennas. For the gain enhancement procedure, our approach was to flare the rim of the antenna, which simultaneously led to an increase in the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. Parametric studies were carried out to obtain the optimal flaring angle. The peak realized gain was obtained as 17.2 dBi with an impedance bandwidth of 55% (2.4 dB and 28.6% increase in gain and bandwidth, respectively, compared to the unflared antenna). To further enhance the impedance bandwidth, an inductive iris was added to improve impedance matching at the waveguide aperture. We varied the width of the iris to obtain the optimal width that provided the best gain and impedance bandwidth result of 17.1 dBi and 66% (~40% increase compared to the unflared antenna without iris). To experimentally verify the work, prototypes were fabricated and tested. We found good agreement between simulation and measurement. The results of this study indicate that gain and bandwidth can be enhanced through optimized geometrical modification of the SBF structure. Furthermore, our 3D-printed technique demonstrates a mass reduction compared with conventional metallic structures.