A Millimeter-Wave 2D Beam Steering Antenna Using Extended Hemispherical Dielectric Lens Antenna Subarrays

Abstract

Recent work has proposed that millimeter-wave beam steering antennas consisting of lens antenna subarrays (LASs) reduce hardware complexity. This manuscript extends the concept to 2D beam steering with extended hemispherical dielectric lenses (EHDLs). To accomplish this, we introduce a design process to maximize scan range and side lobe level (SLL) performance. The design process first employs the solution of the geometric disk covering problem to identify the initial positions of the feed antennas such that the subarray size, M, is minimized. This process is followed by systematic 3D full-wave simulation-based parametric sweeps of lens geometry and feed antenna positions to maximize scan range and minimize SLL. Finally, we demonstrate this process with a 38 GHz antenna consisting of L = 7 LASs and M = 17 feed antennas per LAS. The resulting antenna has a ±36° field of view, −9.5 dB SLL, 5° half-power beamwidth, and ~20 dBi maximum realized gain. Compared to the existing literature on subarray-based beam-steering antennas, this antenna performs with a more extensive scan range while offering a comparable SLL performance.