LAUSR

A high-gain broadband empty substrate integrated waveguide (ESIW) H-plane horn antenna constructed by four low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) layers is proposed in this paper. The empty structure is fabricated by using high-precision laser engraving technology. A slotted rectangular dielectric load (SRDL) is introduced by simply extending the substrates, resulting a 4-dB gain enhancement and a 31% bandwidth improvement. The proposed antenna gives a measured realized gain at 14.5-dBi level with a relative impedance bandwidth larger than 19.6% (|S11| ≤ − 10 dB). The proposed antenna features the merits of low cost, high gain, and broad bandwidth.