Additive manufactured dielectric Gutman lens

Abstract

In this Letter, the design of a 3D printed fully dielectric Gutman lens is presented. The authors demonstrate the feasibility of using highly accessible and cheap additive manufacturing technology to produce a compact and high performing antenna lens. The lens is designed to operate at K u band and utilises a flat feed surface that approximates the focal sphere. The flat feed surface allows for beam steering that requires only translational movement of the feed. The lens has a measured realised gain of 20 dBi with 3 dB scan loss at +45°. The lens finds applications in systems that require high gain antennas, such as the new generation of satellite and 5G communications and radar technology.

Quasi-Optical Multi-Beam Antenna Technologies for B5G and 6G mmWave and THz Networks: A Review

“…This includes the reflecting Luneburg lens [87], which is suitable for feeding leaky wave antennas upon reflection at the circumference of the lens; and the Gutman lens [88], which is characterized by a focus inside of the lens rather than on its surface. A recent design reported in [89] was realized with the fused filament additive manufacturing method. Another interesting lens design, providing the focusing properties of a planar Luneburg lens without any dielectrics, is the Rinehart-Luneburg lens.…”

Parametric Study of a Fully 3D-Printed Dielectric Resonator Antenna Loaded With a Metallic Cap

“…In addition, the introduction of low-loss dielectric filaments [4] and high-conductive filaments [5] has enabled low-cost additive manufacturing of complex microwave topologies. In recent years, many studies has been focused on the high-frequency characterization of the materials used for 3D-printing [6]- [8] and on the fabrication of high-frequency structures such as metamaterials [9]- [11], antennas [12]- [15], dielectric lenses [16]- [20], amongst other implementations [21].…”

“…One of the main drawbacks of this technology is the limitation of available permittivity values on standard dielectric materials and that the complexity of the shape either increases the manufacturing cost or is limited by current manufacturing processes. This shape issue can be easily overcome by using 3D-printing, which allows the manufacture of different shapes, only depending on the precision of the printer, while for the permittivity values, we can obtain different dielectric constants just by varying the infill percentage of the 3D-printed dielectric [16], [17], [23].…”

Directivity enhancement of a cylindrical wire antenna by a graded index dielectric shell designed using strictly conformal transformation optics

“…The resultant material, in this case, is a graded index (GRIN) isotropic nonhomogeneous dielectric 38 . Having such GRIN material opens up a wide range of fabrication methods to realize the device, including drilling sub-wavelength holes in a dielectric substrate 5 , 39 , 40 , using graded photonic crystals 41 – 43 , dielectric layered shell deposition 39 , 44 , 45 , electron-beam lithography 46 – 48 , and 3D printing 49 , 50 . Owing to their practicality, CTO and QCTO have drawn a great deal of attention.…”