3D Printed Dielectric Lenses Increase Antenna Gain and Widen Beam Scanning Angle

There is a push in a majority of telecommunications and RF sensing markets toward higher performance wireless links and sensing technologies. To achieve these new regimes of throughput, latency, reliability, quantities of wirelessly connected devices, configurability, and sensing resolution there has been substantial industry investment, from cellular telecommunications to military radar applications, in using higher frequency portions of the spectrum. These efforts have required the development of more capable advanced/active antenna systems (AAS) for telecommunications and active electronically steered antenna arrays (AESA) for military/defense sensing and jamming technology. More sophisticated AAS are needed at higher frequencies to overcome the high atmospheric attenuation and alignment challenges associated with microwave and millimeter-wave communications and sensing. For the most part, electronically steerable phased array antennas have been the most explored solution for realizing AAS.

This whitepaper discusses the trends in the RF/ microwave industry driving the demand of AAS and some of the challenges associated with building AAS using traditional approaches. Furthermore, this paper details the benefits of using dielectric lenses and switched antenna array elements to achieve electronically steerable antenna arrays that can be lower cost, faster steering, higher gain, and with much wider beamsteering angle capability than with phased array antenna technology alone. Also included is a discussion of the use of dielectric lenses to augment phased array antenna performance; namely, maximum beam angle, gain, and sidelobe reduction.