ECAM-Fabricated Low-Loss 3D Feed Network and Antenna for 6G Backhaul

This paper introduces a mmWave antenna architecture that employs out-of-plane conductor geometry enabled by a scalable electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM) process. ECAM facilitates the fabrication of high-conductivity 3D transmission lines with reduced loss and improved power-handling capability compared to conventional printed structures. We extend this approach to implement low-loss power dividers for mmWave feed networks and integrate them with a periodic leaky-wave radiating structure to realize a compact, efficient 6G backhaul antenna. The key contribution of this work is demonstrating that ECAM enables an additional geometric degree of freedom, allowing antenna and feed structures to be co-designed for reduced loss by more than 3dB compared to conventional printing technologies.