Design and Fabrication of Nonplanar Yagi–Uda Antennas Based on a Partially Conductive Filling Method

摘要

In this letter, a rapid and easy fabrication approach of nonplanar Yagi-Uda antennas is presented. The presented nonplanar Yagi-Uda antenna has a three-layer configuration and consists of several fully and partially-filled vias including one pair of radiator vias, two partially-filled reflector vias, and two partially-filled director vias. All vias are fully or partially filled by the silver conductive polymer (silver conductive epoxy, or SCE). This new partial filling scenario is realized by squeezing a certain amount of SCE in the vias using an accurate pipette. A nonplanar Yagi-Uda antenna prototype is designed and fabricated to work within the X-band. A good agreement is achieved between the measured and simulated results, which confirms the reliability and robustness of this fabrication approach. The measurement results show that for a Yagi-Uda antenna with just two directors, a gain of 10.2 dBi is achieved.