3D printed horn antennas for millimeter wave and sub-THz bands

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has grown in popularity in many fields including antenna manufacturing. Fast and low-cost prototyping of lightweight products is desired for many electronic applications. This paper presents Ka- and D-band vertically polarized sectoral horn antennas, which are manufactured using 3D printing technologies. Dimensions of both antennas are based on reference metallic antennas. 3D printed antennas are compared against metallic antennas in terms of reflection coefficients, maximum realized gain, and half-power beamwidth to show their efficacy. The 3D printed antennas at both bands reproduce the beam shapes of the respective metallic reference antenna while their maximum realized gain is on average 3 dB lower than the reference due to surface roughness and different feeding structures that affect matching.