Low-terahertz (Low-THz, 100 GHz-1.0 THz) technology is expected to provide unprecedented data rates in future generations of wireless system such as the 6th generation (6G) mobile communication system. Increasing the carrier frequencies from millimeter wave to THz is a potential solution to guarantee the transmission rate and channel capacity. Due to the large transmission loss of Low-THz wave in free space, it is particularly urgent to design high-gain antennas to compensate the additional path loss, and to overcome the power limitation of Low-THz source. Recently, with the continuous updating and progress of additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP) technology, antennas with complicated structures can now be easily manufactured with high precision and low cost. In the first part, this paper demonstrates different approaches of recent development on wideband and high gain sub-millimeter-wave and Low-THz antennas as well as their fabrication technologies. In addition, the performances of the state-of-the-art wideband and high-gain antennas are presented. A comparison among these reported antennas is summarized and discussed. In the second part, one case study of a broadband high-gain antenna at 300 GHz is introduced, which is an all-metal model based on the Fabry–Perot cavity (FPC) theory. The proposed FPC antenna is very suitable for manufacturing using AM technology, which provides a low-cost, reliable solution for emerging THz applications.

This article reports the design and fabrication of a novel all-metal antenna operating in the millimeter-wave band. Based on the resonant cavity antenna (RCA) concept, the principle of antenna operation is explained, and parametric studies of several key design parameters are provided. A novel impedance matching technique is introduced to broaden the antenna return loss bandwidth. Two gain enhancement methods have been employed to achieve a more directive beam with reduced side lobes and back lobes. The D-band antenna prototypes are produced using i) all-metal printing without any postprocessing; ii) dielectric printing with copper metallization applied later. Comparisons of the simulated and measured results amongst the antennas fabricated using the two additive manufacturing techniques are made. Measurement results of the two antenna prototypes show that the proposed design can achieve a 14.2% bandwidth with a maximum gain of 15.5 dBi at 135 GHz. The present work is the first D-band resonant cavity antenna fabricated using two different 3D printing methods.

This paper presents the design of a smart antenna that can achieve three-dimensional beam scanning coverage. The antenna consists of a novel planar feed array and a cylindrical active frequency selective surface (AFSS). First, an array fed metallic reflector is studied as a reference antenna to validate the beam scanning characteristics in the elevation plane. Then the AFSS is assessed through simulation and measurement results. Finally, the complete structure containing the planar collinear array and the AFSS is analyzed. A prototype at S-band has been designed, manufactured and measured. The resulting antenna is shown to be able to operate at the 2.4 − 2.5 GHz frequency band and switch beams in both the azimuth and elevation planes. In the azimuth plane, the proposed antenna is capable of sweeping beams towards different directions to cover a full range of 360°. In the elevation plane, it can achieve beam steering within an angle range of +16°/−15°. The measured maximum gain of the antenna is 9.2 dBi. This is the first report of a low-cost 3D coverage beam scanning antenna based on AFSS.

An interleaved shared-aperture dual-band dual-polarized base station array antenna is proposed in this paper. The lower-band (LB) element is realized by using a multiple folded-dipole antenna (MFDA) and four parasitic loops. To interpret the working principle of the MFDA, a double folded-dipole antenna (DFDA) is firstly analyzed by using the transmission line model. Then, by combining two bended DFDAs and introducing four parasitic loops, a low cross-band scattering LB element with a high out-of-band rejection level of 16 dB is obtained to cover 2.3-2.7 GHz. The higher-band (HB) element with a wide impedance bandwidth of 42.5% (3.0-4.6 GHz), a high roll-off rate (RoR) of 249.2 dB/GHz, and a high out-of-band rejection level of 17 dB is obtained by introducing a meander line loop, a rectangular loop and V-shaped strips near the dipole arms. By combining the proposed low scattering low-pass LB element and the high RoR high-pass HB element, a novel interleaved shared-aperture dual-band dual-polarized array antenna with a small frequency ratio of 1.46 and a high cross-band isolation level of 25 dB is realized. Due to the low-scattering characteristic and filtering response of the LB element, the radiation patterns of the wideband HB sub-arrays are almost unaffected.

3D printing of antennas on removable fingernail for on-body communications at microwave and millimetre waves is proposed. Aerosol Jet technology, a fine-feature material deposition solution, has been used to directly print microstrip patch antennas on an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) removable finger nail substrate. Two antennas have been printed and assessed, one operating at 15 GHz and the other at 28 GHz. Nanoparticle conductive silver ink has been employed to create the microstrip patch antennas and corresponding transmission line using an Optomec machine. The inks are then cured using a PulseForge machine. A further copper layer is added to the millimeter wave antenna via an electroplating process. The antennas have been simulated and measured off-the-finger and on-the-finger. Simulated and measured reflection coefficients (S11) and radiation patterns are found to be in good agreement. The proposed on-body antennas can find application in the Internet of Things (IoT) where large amount of sensing data can be shared at the microwave and millimetre wave spectrum of future 5G communications. The removable finger nails could include other electronic devices such as on-body sensors, computational, storage and communication systems.

This paper presents for the first time the application of 3D printing techniques for the development of conformal antennas for diversity wrist worn wireless communications. Three processes are described with the common challenge of depositing the metallic layers of the antennas on a bracelet fabricated using fuse filament fabrication (FFF). The first is a multistep process which combines adding a layer to smooth the surface of the band, aerosol jetting the metallic tracks, flash curing and then electroplating. The second combines painting the metallic layers by hand and then electroplating. The last process uses a single machine to fabricate both the bracelet and then the metallic layers by means of a direct write system with silver conductive ink. The wrist worn antennas are presented and its performances on the human wrist are discussed. All antennas cover 2.4 GHz and 5.5 GHz used for WLAN communication with the reflection coefficients less than −10 dB. The diversity wrist worn antennas system is developed for the final two processes. Three WLAN antennas are fabricated at different positions and shape angles within the bracelet. In terms of communications systems, the advantage of this configuration is that it can increase coverage. The radiation patterns of the antenna are nearly omnidirectional in free space and directional on the human wrist. When the patterns of the three antennas are combined together, the coverage for the communication system improves. Simulation results of all antenna designs and studies using the finite integration technique (FIT) agree well with experimental measurement results. The main motivation of this work is to investigate alternative additive manufacturing methods for the development of conformal diversity antennas on customized 3D printed parts.