Metal-Coated 3D-Printed Waveguide Antenna for 77 GHz Automotive Radar Applications

This work presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a metal-coated MIMO antenna for 77 GHz automotive applications. The MIMO antenna consists of 4 RX and 2 TX H-plane sectoral horn antennas. The antennas are fed by a hollow rectangular waveguide feeding network implemented by stacking two metal-coated plates with optimized transitions between layers.The current antenna configuration exhibits large matching bandwidth, and the radiation patterns satisfy typical requirements in the elevation and azimuthal planes. In addition, antenna gain is not affected due to the metal coating, and the antennas exhibit similar properties as the antennas of a full-metal reference array.