This article introduces a novel method of laser ablation patterning-based additive manufacturing (AM) to develop a broadband planar antenna for sub-6 GHz wireless communications applications. The presented technique consists of fused deposition modeling (FDM) and the laser ablation cutting-based metal patterning. The metal layer is transferred to a thermoplastic-based ABS substrate without any postprocessing. FDM and metal patterning are independent operations in our procedure and therefore the proposed prototyping is time-efficient compared to the current AM techniques. The 3-D printed antenna is in the form of the single-layer ABS substrate–metal radiator fed by a coplanar waveguide (CPW). The antenna is also printed on an FR-4 substrate using printed circuit board (PCB) technology, and the radiation skills of the 3-D printed antenna are benchmarked with its PCB counterpart. The numerical results obtained with a full-wave analysis tool are verified by the experimental results. The proposed antenna operates on a broadband covering 2.54–5.84-GHz band with the peak gain around 4 dBi and meets the requirements of the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and wireless local area network (WLAN) band applications. The fabricated 3D-printed antenna is loaded to human body, and the reflection coefficients are measured for off-body communication links. The calculated electromagnetic power density profiles on the human phantom are demonstrated for various operating frequencies.

中文翻译：

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基于激光烧蚀切割的金属图案化技术支持 3D 打印宽带天线用于低于 6 GHz 的无线通信应用


本文介绍了一种基于激光烧蚀图案的增材制造 (AM) 的新方法，用于开发用于 6 GHz 以下无线通信应用的宽带平面天线。所提出的技术包括熔融沉积建模（FDM）和基于激光烧蚀切割的金属图案。金属层无需任何后处理即可转移到热塑性 ABS 基材上。 FDM 和金属图案化在我们的程序中是独立的操作，因此与当前的 AM 技术相比，所提出的原型制作具有时间效率。 3D 打印天线采用单层 ABS 基板金属辐射器的形式，由共面波导 (CPW) 供电。该天线还采用印刷电路板 (PCB) 技术印刷在 FR-4 基板上，并且 3D 印刷天线的辐射技能与其对应的 PCB 天线进行了基准测试。实验结果验证了全波分析工具获得的数值结果。所提出的天线工作在覆盖 2.54-5.84-GHz 频段的宽带上，峰值增益约为 4 dBi，满足微波接入全球互操作性 (WiMAX) 和无线局域网 (WLAN) 频段应用的要求。将制作好的 3D 打印天线安装到人体上，并测量离体通信链路的反射系数。计算出的人体模型上的电磁功率密度分布在各种工作频率下得到演示。