Liquid-Crystal-Based Fully Dielectric Lateral Wave Beam-Steering Antenna

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 18; no. 12; pp. 2577 - 2581
• Main Authors: Tesmer, Henning, Reese, Roland, Polat, Ersin, Nickel, Matthias, Jakoby, Rolf, Maune, Holger
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-12-2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna feeds; Antennas; Beam steering; Cavity resonators; Dielectrics; Electrodes; Frequency ranges; liquid crystal (LC); Liquid crystals; millimeter antenna; Permittivity; reconfigurable antenna; Sidelobes; Steering mechanisms; Weight reduction
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2019.2943722

This letter presents a fully dielectric beam-steering lateral antenna operating at the V-band (50 GHZ). The antenna consists of a semicircular Rexolite body with an embedded liquid crystal (LC) cavity. An electrode network is used in order to align the LC molecules such that they form reconfigurable areas of high and low permittivity. The area of high permittivity is used to steer the direction of the beam. Due to the dielectric nature of the antenna, it shows enhanced fabrication simplicity and a weight reduction factor of 21 when compared to previous work. In addition, the bias electrodes may have arbitrary shape and are easily accessible, ensuring a high versatility for future designs. The steering mechanism is nearly frequency-independent, and the antenna is matched throughout the whole frequency range. Beam-steering angles of 17° are reported with a gain of 16 dBi and a maximum sidelobe level of -7.6 dB.