Increasing the bandwidth of cavity-backed SIW antennas by using stacked cavities

This paper presents a technique to increase the bandwidth in substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity-backed antennas, inspired by the design of cavity filters. The proposed structure consists of a slot antenna backed by two cavities, located one on top of the other and coupled through a slot. To demonstrate the bandwidth increase, a standard cavity-backed SIW antenna, with a rectangular slot etched in the top metal plane, has been designed, manufactured, and measured. Subsequently, a similar antenna was developed, by doubling the substrate thickness with the aim to improve the bandwidth. Finally, the new topology of two-cavity SIW antenna has been implemented and compared with the two previous ones. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed two-cavity antenna exhibits a bandwidth twice as large as the standard SIW cavity-backed antenna.