Received: 4 October 2016

| Revised: 7 December 2016

| Accepted: 7 December 2016
DOI: 10.1002/mmce.21080

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Simple, compact and broadband right-angle transition between

substrate integrated waveguide and rectangular waveguide at
Ka-band

Teng Li | Wenbin Dou

State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Abstract

waves, Southeast University, Nanjing
210096, People’s Republic of China
Correspondence
Teng Li, State Key Laboratory of
Millimeter waves, Southeast
University, Nanjing 210096,
People’s Republic of China.
Email: liteng_nj@163.com
Funding information
China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation Funded Project , Grant/
Award Number: 2016M591740.
In this article, a simple compact broadband right-angle transition between substrate
integrated waveguide (SIW) and rectangular waveguide (RWG) working at Ka-band
is proposed. Three coupling slots etched on the interface are developed to couple the
electromagnetic field from SIW to RWG. A metallic via is introduced into the end
slot to enhance the inductance and all the slots are developed in different dimensions
for multi-resonance. By proper optimizing, three resonances are obtained which
broadens the impedance matching effectively. All details of the transition are
designed on the SIW part for the purpose of simple and compact. Two back-to-back
prototypes working at Ka-band are designed, fabricated and measured. The measured
results show that the mean value of insertion loss for a single transition is about 0.51
dB and the return loss is better than 15 dB over the full Ka-band. The proposed
right-angle transition has advantages of simple assembly, compact size and broad-
band characteristics and it can be a good candidate for millimeter-wave applications.

KEYWORDS
broadband transition, rectangular waveguide, right-angle, substrate integrated wave

1 | INTRODUCTION As summarized in,12 there are two types of transitions to

Substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology has been
proven as a very promising candidate for microwave and
millimeter-wave applications. The SIW is a waveguide-like
structure and can be fabricated in planar form by using two
rows of periodic metallic via holes embedded in a dielectric
substrate. It preserves the attractive features of the rectangu-
lar waveguide (RWG) and the microstrip line, such as low-
loss, low-profile, low-cost, high-Q factor and easy integration
with other planar circuit components.1 This transmission
line has been widely applied in areas of microwave and
millimeter-wave radar, imaging, and wireless communication
systems. As the operating band increasing to the millimeter-
wave band, the external systems such as a vector network
analyzer is connected by the RWG for the purpose of
low-loss. Therefore, a transition between SIW and RWG is
required and various transitions have been reported in the
literature over the past few years.2–16
meet the requirements of different applications, the in-line
one, and the right-angle one. The main axis of both wave-
guides is collinear for in-line transitions but perpendicular
for right-angle transitions. The in-line transitions can be eas-
ily designed with broadband by using RWG taper or broad-
band probes inserting into the RWG.2–9 Due to a huge
different thickness between SIW and RWG, the RWG part
of the in-line ones are fabricated in a complex and bulky
form which may be limited in some compact applications.
The right-angle transitions are usually designed with a cou-
pling aperture or slot etched on the broad side of the SIW.
Therefore, the RWG can be directly mounted on the SIW
which owns simple structure and compact size but the band-
width is limited to 10%.10,11 Several approaches have been
investigated to improve the performance of right-angle tran-
sition. Two coupling slots were proposed and the bandwidth
is improved to 6.6%.12 Recently, a developed flange of
RWG integrated with stepped ridges is introduced between

Int J RF Microw Comput Aided Eng. 2017;27:e21080. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mmce V

C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1 of 7
https://doi.org/10.1002/mmce.21080
2 of 7 | LI AND DOU

FIGURE 1 Configuration of proposed right-angle transition

RWG and SIW and a bandwidth of 25.7% is achieved at Ka-
band.13 This powerful improvement also applies on the ultra-
thin substrate and a bandwidth of 38.57% is achieved.14 By
further optimization, the full Ka-band transition can be
achieved.15,16 These developed right-angle transitions obtain
the wide bandwidth at the cost of high complexity and cost
of RWG part which is away from the simple purpose. There-
fore, a simple compact low-cost broadband right-angle tran-
sition from SIW to RWG is still required.
In this article, a simple broadband right-angle transition
between SIW and RWG is proposed. The transition is
designed working at Ka-band and three coupling slots are
developed to couple electromagnetic field from SIW to
RWG. A metallic via is introduced to enhance the inductance
of the end coupling slot. The three coupling slots are
designed with various dimension and spacing for multi-
resonance. An inductive window at the input of SIW is uti-
lized for impedance matching. By optimizing these factors,
three resonances are generated and the impedance matching
of transition is improved greatly. Due to all the details of the
transition are focused on the SIW part, the transition owns
simple and compact mechanical configuration and it can be
mounted flush on the flange of standard RWG conveniently.
Two back-to-back prototypes are fabricated and measured to
verify our designs. The measured results show that the inser-
tion loss of a single transition is less than 0.51 dB and the
return loss is better than 15 dB over Ka-band. Owing to the
leakage loss, the insertion loss increased with the frequency.
The experimental results demonstrate the proposed right-
angle transition. Owing to its advantages of simple assembly,
compact size and broadband characteristics, this transition
can be a good candidate for millimeter-wave applications.
FIGURE 2 Details of the proposed transition
is shown in Figure 1 and the WR-28 waveguide with flange
is set as the RWG output port. Four screw holes and three
alignment pin holes are assigned around to ensure the tight
and accuracy connection between SIW and RWG. All details
of transition are designed on the SIW part where three cou-
pling slots with a metallic via and an inductive window are
introduced. The design procedure will be proposed in the
subsequent sections.
2.1 | Design of SIW transmission line
The SIW is a waveguide-like structure which is formed by
two rows of metallic vias or slots embedded in a dielectric
substrate that electrically connects two parallel metal plates.
Therefore, this transmission line can be equivalent to a con-
ventional dielectric-filled metallic RWG and only the domi-
nant mode TE10 mode can exist.17 At the beginning of the
design, the SIW can be instead by dielectric-filled RWG for
convenience. The cut-off frequency fc of SIW is designed in
accordance with the RWG one which is 21.08 GHz. The
equivalent width of SIW we can be obtained from
c
we 5 pffiffiffiffi (1)
2fc Er
Where, c is the speed of light and Er is the dielectric con-
stant of substrate. The substrate used here is F4BMX220
with following specifications: Er 52:2, tand5731024 at
10 GHz, thickness of 1.5 mm and 35 lm-thick layer of
T A BL E 1 The dimensions of the proposed right-angle
transition (Unit: mm)

d P wm lm wr lr w1 l1 w2 l2
2 | DESIGN OF THE RIGHT-ANGLE
0.5 0.72 4.81 0.72 7.512 3.956 2.03 6.32 0.47 4.93
TRANSITION BETWEEN SIW AND RWG
w3 l3 s1 s2 s3 s4 r1 r2 r3 ws
The right-angle transition is designed to couple electromag-
0.21 2.67 0.7 0.15 0.196 0.7 0.5 0.578 0.76 5.2
netic wave from SIW to RWG. The assembling configuration
LI AND DOU
FIGURE 3 Simulated S-parameters of the single transition
with various coupling slots
copper. Therefore, the equivalent width is 4.8 mm. The
width of SIW can be determined by the following formula18:
 
ws 5we 1p 0:766e20:4482d=p 21:176e21:214d=p (2)
Where, p is the distance between adjacent metallic vias
and d represents the diameter of metallic vias. The condition
of 2) is 0:5 < d=p < 0:8.19 The proper values of parameter
p and d are chosen as follows: p 5 0.72 mm, d 5 0.5 mm,
and d=p50:694. From 2), the width of SIW is calculated to
be 5.2 mm. Using this SIW transmission line, the transfer
characteristic of the transition can be fully studied.
2.2 | Configuration of proposed right-angle transition
The SIW transmission line is perpendicular to the output
RWG which means the electric field in the SIW should be
transformed 908. There are mainly two methods to achieve
this feature. One is using a coupling slot etched on the com-
mon face between SIW and RWG where the slot cuts the
surface current and the electromagnetic fields are coupled. It
makes a very simple construction but is limited by narrow
bandwidth.10–12 The other one is imagining the transition as
FIGURE 4 The electric fields distribution on the coupling slots at (a) 27.75 GHz, (b) 35 GHz and (c) 39.25 GHz.
| 3 of 7
an E-plane waveguide bend structure which can be designed
with broadband.13–16 Generally, a stepped ridge is introduced
in the RWG to obtain a smooth transition. However, it suf-
fers from complexity and difficulty in manufacturing and
assembling.
Inspired by the developed transition using two slots to
broaden the bandwidth,12 the multi-resonance can be utilized
to obtain broadband impedance matching. As illustrated in
Figure 1, three slots are proposed and etched on the top cop-
per of the end SIW cavity. Details of SIW part are illustrated
in Figure 2. The coupling slots are numbered as 1 to 3 from
the left side to the right side. In the coupling slot 1, an induc-
tive metallic via hole is introduced to enhance the inductance.
An inductive window is formed between the cavity and SIW
transmission line for reactance adjustment. The circular loop
patch around the inductive via hole is reserved to meet the
printed circuit board (PCB) process. The arc gap between
loop patch and coupling slot comes from the same reason.
The cavity is flush-mounted to WR-28 standard wave-
guide (7.112 mm 3 3.556 mm). The screw holes and align-
ment pin holes are drilled depending to the flange. All the
designs are focused on the SIW part. Therefore, proposed
transition structure features simple, compact and low cost.
2.3 | Analysis of proposed right-angle transition
As mentioned previously, three slots are utilized for multi-
resonance, the inductive window and metallic via hole at the
left slot also take effect on the impedance matching. There
are a few rules to choose the size range of slots. For all the
slots, the length should be less than 7.112 mm which is the
width of RWG. The initial lengths are suggested to be
5.5mm, 4.5mm and 3.75mm which are around the half wave-
lengths at 27 GHz, 33.5 GHz and 40 GHz. The spacing
between slots and slot width should be larger than 0.13 mm
which is determined by the processing precision of PCB fab-
rication. Since there are too many parameters, the powerful
genetic algorithm is adopted for optimization and a wide
4 of 7 | LI AND DOU

FIGURE 5 The electric current distribution of the split reso-

nant ring

bandwidth can be obtained. All simulations are carried out

by a full wave simulator ANSYS HFSS. The final values of
the parameter are summarized in Table 1.
Based on the geometry of this transition without inserting
a metallic via hole in the slot, the relationship between the
number of coupling slots and the achievable bandwidth is
studied as well. By optimizing the dimensions of these tran-
sitions, the simulated S-parameters of the single transition
are summarized in Figure 3.
It can be found that only one resonance is generated for
one coupling slot and the bandwidth of 4.58 GHz is obtained
with a return loss better than 15 dB. For the transition with
two coupling slots, two resonances are generated and the
obtained bandwidth is about 9.66 GHz which is more than
twice of single slot transition. However, there are only two
resonances observed for three coupling slots transition and
the bandwidth is around 9.17 GHz. Owing to the limitation
of wr, the additional slot is not resonant. By introducing the
FIGURE 7 The parameter study of slot 3 by varying (a)
w3, (b) l3 and (c) s3

metallic via hole in the coupling slot 1, the proposed transi-

tion has three resonances with broadened bandwidth and the
return loss is improved as well which is better than 21.5 dB
over the whole Ka-band. The simulated |S21| is between 0.06
dB and 0.1 dB which shows a very low insertion loss.
The resonant frequencies of the proposed transition are
27.75 GHz, 35 GHz and 39.25 GHz. In order to further study
the operating mechanics, the electric fields of the interface
between SIW and RWG at the resonant frequencies are
depicted in Figure 4. It can be found that the maximum elec-
tric field happened between the left edge of the coupling slot
FIGURE 6 The power flow of the coupling slots versus 1 and metallic via hole at 27.75 GHz. In fact, the short end
frequency and metallic via formed a split resonant ring as shown in
LI AND DOU
FIGURE 8 Simulated S-parameters of the single transition
based on 0.75 mm thickness substrate
Figure 5. The electric current is cut off at the opened arc gap
where the electromagnetic wave is coupled into the RWG.
At the same time, the coupling also happened at the slot 2
but little coupling for slot 3. As frequency increasing, a faint
resonance happened at about 35 GHz and the coupling can
be observed on all the slots. At about 39.25 GHz, the electric
field becomes attractive in the slot 3.
In order to accurately study the coupling, the power flow
from SIW to RWG is calculated versus frequency as shown
in Figure 6 where P1, P2 and P3 represent the coupling
power of the slot 1, slot 2 and slot 3, respectively. The input
power is set at 1 watt and the negative value means the power
is coupled from RWG to SIW. It can be seen that P1
increases linearly with the increase of frequency and reaches
the maximum around 39 GHz and then drops rapidly.
Instead, P2 decreases unilaterally and drops quickly after
36 GHz. The curve of P3 shows an interesting characteristic.
The power flow is reversed until 39 GHz due to the slot is
not resonant and affected by mutual coupling. The parameters
simulation of slot 3 is shown in Figure 7 for further study. It
can be found that by varying the dimension or position of
slot 3, the return loss around the first resonant frequency is
almost unchanged but it becomes more sensitive around the
second resonant frequency. At the moment, although the slot
FIGURE 9 Photograph of the fabricated back-to-back
transitions
| 5 of 7
F I G U R E 1 0 Simulation and measured results of the back-
to-back transitions
3 couples little power, it affects the reactance of adjacent cou-
pling slot 2. Then, the power P3 increases rapidly after
38 GHz which also agrees with the electric field distribution
in Figure 4c and S-parameters response in Figure 7. The total
power flow (Pt) of the three slots is also calculated and it
always around 1 watt all over the operating band which
means broadband impedance matching.
2.4 | Analysis of substrate thickness
A primary discontinuity between SIW and RWG is the thick-
ness and the effects of substrate thickness should be studied.
Half thickness substrate (0.75 mm) is adopted for compari-
son and the configuration of transition is unchanged. Before
optimizing this transition, one coupling slot transition is stud-
ied and the simulated results are shown in Figure 8. The
bandwidth is about 1.74 GHz with the return loss better than
15 dB which is much less than the thicker one as discussed
previously. In fact, the capacitance of slot is reduced with
the decreasing of substrate thickness. Therefore, the resonant
length of the slot is longer than the slot on the thicker sub-
strate. The slot length is limited by the width of RWG which
FIGURE 11 The simulated S-parameters of a single transi-
tion versus leakage gap between SIW and RWG
6 of 7 | LI AND DOU

T A BL E 2 The comparisons with other right-angle transitions

Center Bandwidth Return Insertion Assembly and

frequency (GHz) (%) loss (dB) loss (dB) fabrication
Li et al.10 35 3.14 >11 <3.4 Simple

Huang and Wu 11
36.3 8.26 >13 <0.26 Simple

Glogowski et al. 12
26 6.6 >15 <0.5 Simple

Li and Dou13 34.825 25.7 >15 <0.55 Complex

Li and Dou14 31.5 38.57 >14.5 <0.44 Complex

Li et al.15 30 54.67 >15.6 <1.4 Complex

Dong et al. 16
33 40.9 >15 <0.55 Complex

This work 33.5 38.81 >15 <0.51 Simple

means it is hard to obtain resonance at a lower frequency for
the proposed structure. The optimized results shown in Fig-
ure 8 demonstrate this deduction and only two resonances
are observed over the Ka-band.
In spite of this, the bandwidth with a fraction of 26% is
realized which demonstrates that the proposed structure of
transition is still valid for the thin substrate.
3 | FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT
OF THE PROPOSED RIGHT-ANGLE
TRANSITION
RWG and the leakage loss may be caused by the deforma-
tion of the substrate. Assuming there is a thin gap exists
between SIW and RWG nearing the coupling slot 3. The
thickness of the gap is studied and the S-parameters of the
single transition are shown in Figure 11. It can be found that
the return loss is still better than 15 dB but the insertion loss
is increased with the gap thickness and frequency.
The comparison with other right-angle transitions is
listed in Table 2. It can be found that the proposed transition
owns simple assembly, compact size and wide bandwidth.
Therefore, it can be easily used for broadband applications.

Two back-to-back transition prototypes with different lengths

were fabricated for the experiment as shown in Figure 9 and
the spacing between transitions is 14.37 mm and 43.17 mm,
respectively. The measurements were made by an Agilent
E8363C vector network analyzer. The simulated and meas-
ured results are shown in Figure 10 and good agreements are
obtained.
The simulated results show that the insertion loss is less
than 0.39 dB and the return loss is better than 18.58 dB over
the whole Ka-band. The measured return loss is better than
15 dB over Ka-band and the mean value of insertion loss is
1.4 dB and 1.14 dB for long transition and short transition.
The average attenuation of the SIW can be evaluated by
comparing the insertion loss of the two prototypes which is
0.009dB/mm over the operating band. Therefore, the intro-
duced loss by SIW is about 0.39 dB for the longer one and
the mean value of insertion loss of a single transition is about
0.51 dB over the whole Ka-band. In fact, the insertion loss is
less than 0.6 dB from 27 to 38 GHz. The insertion loss is
increased with the frequency which may be attributed to the
coupling slot 3 operating. The fabricated error of slot 3 can
increase the insertion loss as shown in Figure 7. Further-
more, the coupling slot 3 is close to the interface of SIW and
4 | CONCLUSION
In this paper, a wideband right-angle transition from SIW to
RWG at Ka-band is proposed and demonstrated. The intro-
duced three coupling slots and metallic via hole are intro-
duced to achieve multi-resonance and wideband impedance
matching. Experimental results agree well with simulations.
About 38.81% bandwidth with a return loss better than 15
dB and mean insertion loss of 0.51 dB is obtained. Owning
to simple assembly and wide bandwidth, this novel right-
angle transition can be widely used in millimeter-wave
applications.
ACKNOW L E DGM E NT S
This work is supported by China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation Funded Project under Grant 2016M591740.
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A U T HO R B IO G R A P H I E S
TENG LI received his B.S. degree in elec-
tronic information science and technol-
ogy from Xiamen University, Xiamen,
China, in 2009, and the Ph.D. degree in
the electromagnetic field and microwave
technology from Southeast University,
Nanjing, China, in 2015, respectively.
He is a Post-Doctoral researcher with the Southeast Univer-
sity and his current research interests include the microwave
and millimeter wave antenna and passive circuits.
WENBIN DOU graduated from the Univer-
sity of Science and Technology of
China, Hefei, in 1978. He received his
Master and Ph.D. degrees from the Uni-
versity of Electronic Science and Tech-
nology of China in 1983 and 1987,
respectively, both in Electronics and
Communications. From 1987 to 1989, he worked in South-
east University as a Post-Doctoral researcher. Since 1989, he
has been with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves,
Southeast University. In 1994, he was promoted to professor.
He is vice-director of the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter
Waves. His current research interests include the ferrite
devices, millimeter wave quasi-optics, millimeter wave focal
imaging, antennas and scattering, millimeter wave binary
optics, and so on.
How to cite this article: Li T, and Dou W. Simple,
compact and broadband right-angle transition between
substrate integrated waveguide and rectangular wave-
guide at Ka-band. Int J RF Microw Comput Aided Eng.
2017;27:e21080. https://doi.org/10.1002/mmce.21080