Using Optimized Eccentricity Rexolite Lens for Electrical Beam Steering with Inte- Grated Aperture Coupled Patch Array

Design and measurement results of a beam-steering integrated lens antenna at 77 GHz are presented. An 8-element LTCC aperture coupled patch antenna feed array with a switching network is used to electrically steer the main beam in H-plane. A 100-mm diameter Rexolite (εr = 2.53) lens is simulated and tested. The eccentricity of the lens is optimized in an earlier work with ray-tracing simulations for improved beam-steering properties compared to the conventional extended hemispherical and elliptical lenses. The beamsteering properties including scan loss, main-beam width and direction, side-lobe levels, directivity, and cross-polarization are analyzed in detail with both simulations and radiation pattern measurements. As expected, the results show that the side-lobe and cross-polarization levels are not predicted accurately with large feed offsets using the ray-tracing simulations. Nevertheless, it is shown that the lens shape can be successfully optimized with the simple and fast ray-tracing simulations. The measured half-power beam-width at 77 GHz is 2.5◦ ± 0.2◦ up to the largest tested beam-steering angle of 30◦. The optimized eccentricity low permittivity lens results in smaller scan loss than the conventional lenses. Received 29 August 2012, Accepted 21 September 2012, Scheduled 1 October 2012 * Corresponding author: Aki Karttunen ([email protected]). 346 Karttunen et al.