Orthomode transducer for dual polarized substrate integrated circuits and antennas

A complete dual polarized substrate integrated structure is presented. It comprises planar excitation schemes for both orthogonal TE10 and TE01 modes along with an orthomode transducer (OMT) to combine/split them. The whole structure is compact (only 2 layers of substrate) and it is based on the Extended Substrate Integrated Waveguide (ESIW), which allows the propagation of TEm0 and TE0n modes. Differently from common approaches, not only the OMT itself but the complete system can be manufactured using standard PCB technology and is compatible with other substrate integrated circuits. The proposed orthogonal mode combination can be used to obtain independent channels of information from a single substrate integrated antenna, such as a dual polarized horn or a multimode leaky-wave antenna. This is a promising approach to tackle the increasing demand for capacity in modern communication systems when combined with, for instance, polarization or spatial diversity techniques. © 2014 European Association on Antennas and Propagation.