A Beam-Steerable Lens Antenna for Ku-Band High-Power Microwave Applications

A beam-steerable lens antenna based on the concept of Risley prism is presented in this communication. The antenna is made up of a feed antenna and three transmit-array (T-A) lenses, including a stationary lens and two rotatable lenses. Beam steering is achieved by rotating the two rotatable lenses around the antenna axis independently. An antenna prototype has been successfully designed, simulated, fabricated, and measured in Ku-band. The results show that the beam of the antenna can be steered to any direction within a 91.2 degrees conical region. During beam steering, the measured peak gain of the antenna reaches 38.1 dBi, the maximum aperture efficiency achieves 80.5%, and the gain variation is less than 1.7 dB. Moreover, the simulated results show that the power-handling capacity of this antenna could reach gigawatt level, which indicates application potentials of this antenna in high-power microwave (HPM) field.