Steering Phased Array Antenna Beams to the Horizon Using a Buckyball NIM Lens

A General Method for Designing a Radome to Enhance the Scanning Angle of a Phased Array Antenna

“…Other methods cannot achieve this [2,3]. In many applications, a linear relationship between the input angle and output angle is often desirable.…”

“…Due to the basic principle that a PAA can be treated as a result of a multi-beam interference, we can simply set some line sources with fixed phase delay to mimic PAA. For a given direction of the scanning beam (θ, φ), the phase delay for an element in the array can be given as [3]:…”

“…One way is the utilization of mechanical augmentations, which sacrifices the main advantage of a PAA (electronically scanning without the mechanical time delay). A good method is to extend the scanning angle of a PAA by using a specially designed radome, which can steer the beam produced by PAA to a larger angle [2,3]. In 2011, Lam et al, have proposed a Bucky-ball NIM lens that can steer beams produced by a PAA to the horizon [3].…”

“…A good method is to extend the scanning angle of a PAA by using a specially designed radome, which can steer the beam produced by PAA to a larger angle [2,3]. In 2011, Lam et al, have proposed a Bucky-ball NIM lens that can steer beams produced by a PAA to the horizon [3]. The proposed Bucky-ball NIM lens shows good performance numerically and experimentally.…”

“…Compared with the previous method [2,3], our method has the following advantages: firstly, the relationship between the incident beam produced by a PAA and the output beam steered by our radome can be designed in advance (e.g., a linear relationship can be achieved); secondly, the design process of our method is very simple and does not need any optimization; and thirdly, the shape of the radome can be designed arbitrarily which can be chosen according to the practical application.…”