High Radiation Efficiency, Lightweight Spherical Luneburg Lens Antenna Based on Metamaterial

Abstract

This paper presents a spherical Luneburg lens made of metal rod Metamaterial. The metal rod can be realized by printing conducting coatings on the surface of rod-shaped foams In addition, these rod-shaped foams can be fixed on the honeycomb material to form the entire spherical Luneburg lens, thus an extremely light weight is obtained. Moreover, the spherical lens is almost made of all metal materials, a high radiation efficiency of the lens is also obtained. In addition, due to the almost rotational symmetry characteristic of the proposed spherical lens, it is able to achieve wide-angle beam scanning in the azimuth plane Simulation results show that the lens has high radiation efficiency high aperture efficiency within 1.88~2.5GHz, and has the ability to cover a scanning range of −180 °~180 ° in the azimuth plane.