Novel Microstrip-to-Waveguide Feed Employing a Double-Y Junction

This feed is useful for low-cost measurements involving waveguides up to X-band.

Previous microstrip-to-waveguide transitions either required a hermetically sealed waveguide configuration, or a balun that needed to be tuned according to the frequency band of interest. In this design, the balun is realized using a double-Y junction to transition from microstrip to coplanar strip feeding a quasi-Yagi dipole array (see figure). The length of the feed (L_f) extending into the waveguide is 15.54 mm. The length of the ground plane below the ULTRALAM substrate is 7.75 mm. The lengths L1, L2, and L3 are 8.50 mm, 4.38 mm, and 2.14 mm, respectively. These lengths were computed via a preliminary optimization aimed at improving the return loss at the band edges.