A Terahertz Wide-Angle Beamsteering 3-D Printed Half-Compressed Elliptical Luneburg Lens With Planar Focal Plane

A Terahertz half-compressed elliptical Luneburg lens is designed on the basis of a transformation optic method. To expand the scanning angle range of the Luneburg lens with a planar focal plane, half compression is employed. The compressibility factor, focusing ability and beamsteering ability of the lens are investigated in theory. To verify the proposed design, the designed lens is manufactured by utilizing high-precision 3-D printing technology for multibeam applications. The required dielectric constant of a half-compressed elliptical Luneburg lens can be achieved by adjusting the size of the designed 3-D printed unit cell. Finally, a half-compressed elliptical Luneburg lens with an aperture size of 18 mm x 18 mm and a thickness of 14 mm was manufactured and measured to validate the implementation method at 110 GHz. The measured results indicate that the proposed lens has a maximum gain of 21.3 dBi and 3 dB beamsteering of +/- 52 degrees .