A KU-band Microstrip Antenna Based On High-resistivity-silicon-substrate Used For Smart Munitions

The application of intelligent improvement conventional munitions is one of the most popular areas in military research during these three decades. The quick development of smart munitions causes an increasingly urgent demand of the antennas that used to control the act of the smart munitions. Usually, the size of smart munitions is required to be very small and that make the space of controlling antennas are limited. Not only the volumes, but also the weight, the directivity, the profile of antenna is both strictly controlled to make sure that it can send or receive the system signal in any height or position before the smart munitions hit its target. This article focuses on the design, the manufacturing process and the test results of a kind of microstrip antenna based on high-resistivity-silicon substrate. The main ideas when designing this antenna is to make it smaller and to be easy to put it into mass production. That means the structure of the antenna should be simple and of course, the fundamental parameters of it should be good enough to fit the project requirements. Based on the high-resistivity-silicon substrate, several methods such as etching a cavity on the substrate, using T-type power divides, etc, are used to increase and optimize some fundamental parameters of this microstrip antenna, such as the gain. The design part of the antenna is done by using the High Frequency Structure Simulator(HFSS), the samples of the antenna are manufactured and its processing technique includes microfabrication technology and MEMS manufacture technology like etching, electroplating, etc.The study of Ku-band microstrip antenna used in smart munitions is significant and to be more specific, the main jobs finished in this paper are shown in the next:(1) Completed the design and simulation of the Ku-band microstrip antenna array based on silicon substrate. In this part, both rectangular and circular microstrip patch antenna are designed, modeled and simulated in HFSS. The sizes of their structure are shown by table and the simulation results are provided in different way. By comparing these results and considering the ease of processing, the one which has a smaller, simpler structure as well as good electrical properties is finally chosen.(2) Research about the manufacturing process of Ku-band microstrip antenna array are done in this part. The reasons of how to choose the substrate material, the packaging materials, the depth of electroplating and backside etching, etc, are discussed in this part. Furthermore, the precision of each manufacturing process and which step should be first are also considered. In the end, some process parameters are given in a limited range, the reasons of choosing this range and the method of controlling them are provided. The method of how to simply the manufacture procedure is also given in this part.(3)The test results of Ku-band microstrip antenna array are given in this part. the most important test is the Voltage Standing Wave Ratio(VSWR) test and the power test and corresponding analysis and report are finished.In a word, to manufacture the microstrip antenna, some technologies have been used and all the test data meet the project requirement.