A low‐profile high‐gain multi‐beam antenna based on 3D‐printed cylindrical Luneburg lens

Abstract

In this article, a low-profile and high-gain multi-beam antenna is proposed. The antenna consists of a cylindrical Luneburg lens based planar beamforming network, a folded double-layer guided-wave structure, and a leaky wave antenna (LWA) array. All the three parts are manufactured by 3D printing technology. The lens is realized by an nshaped gradual thickness unit to realize the refractive index variation of Luneburg lens in a parallel plate waveguide. The lens and the LWA array are folded into a double-layer guided wave structure, which transforms the planar wave from the flat Luneburg lens to the LWA array to realize the antenna miniaturization. The antenna is excited by a radially placed microstrip antenna array at the focal plane of the lens. The proposed antenna has seven beams with minimum −2.5 dB crossover level, and the scanning range is AE29 . The broadside gain is 19.8 dB, and the gain variation in scan range is 2.7 dB. The proposed antenna is fabricated and tested, and the measured results agree well with the simulated ones. Due to the advantages including low-profile, high aperture efficiency, high radiation efficiency, and low cost, the proposed design can find its applications in multi-beam radar and communication systems.

Advancing into Millimeter Wavelengths for IoT: Multibeam Modified Planar Luneburg Lens Antenna with Porous Plastic Material

“…Traditional fabrication methods faced scalability and practicality limitations, which 3D printing has overcome by enabling rapid prototyping and iterative optimization [11]. Various optimization methods [2,3], including genetic algorithms [11], topology optimization [5,7,18,22], and parametric modeling [3,[18][19][20][21][22][23], have been explored to enhance lens designs compatible with 3D printing materials [3,4,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. The integration of porous polymer compounds into antenna systems presents new opportunities [3,4], offering low dielectric constant implementation possibilities and tunable porosity ideal for millimeter-wave applications [3] (Chps.1, 2), [4].…”

“…The integration of porous polymer compounds into antenna systems presents new opportunities [3,4], offering low dielectric constant implementation possibilities and tunable porosity ideal for millimeter-wave applications [3] (Chps.1, 2), [4]. The incorporation of porous plastic material into MMP-LLA manufacturing signifies a significant advancement in millimeter-wave antenna technology [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Leveraging 3D printing technologies, the objective is to establish efficient communication platforms tailored to IoT demands [1,3], emphasizing spatial efficiency [3,4], operational efficacy [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30], and performance enhancement [4] (Chps.…”

A dual‐band dual‐polarized shared‐aperture SIW slot antenna array with beam scanning

“…1 Mechanical beam scanning antennas based on traditional parabolic reflectors are low cost, but they are often bulky and suffer from high profiles. 2 To design low profile beam-scanning flat antenna arrays, some mechanical phase shifters have been proposed, such as planar lenses [3][4][5] and delay lines. 6,7 Planar parabolic reflectors are also used for beam scanning.…”

Design of a pattern reconfigurable antenna for wide‐angle scanning phased array applications

“…With the development of satellite navigation 1,2 and airborne/shipborne radar 3 technology, phased array antennas have been widely used in communication and radar systems for their flexible beamforming capability. 4 Compared with the passive beamforming network-based antenna arrays, 5,6 phased arrays can achieve more controllable functions such as multibeam and twodimensional beam scanning by a single antenna array. 7 The performances of a phased array antenna depend on multifactors, for example, the phase and magnitude distributions, the coupling between the adjacent units, the unit distances, and so forth.…”