Connected slots antenna array feeding a high-gain lens for wide-angle beam-steering applications.

This paper presents a 60 GHz connected slots linear-phased array feeding a high-gain semi-symmetric lens antenna. This design provides high gain, broadband, and beam-steering capabilities for gigabit rate access and backhaul communications. The connected slots antenna array (CSAA) is excited at 16× equidistant points which not only yields spatial power combining but also allows the progressive phase changes to steer the beam in ±45^° in azimuth plane. To characterize the CSAA-fed lens antenna, four different power splitters are fabricated which steer the main beam in 0, 15, 30, and 45^°. The lens is designed in a way to overcome the scan loss and get comparatively higher gain when beam is steered away from the broadside. The measured results show 25.4 dBi maximum gain with 3 dB gain bandwidth covering the full band 57–66 GHz whereas 3 dB beam-steering range is ±45^° for all frequencies. Besides, the half power beamwidth is 6 and 10^° in elevation (E-plane) and azimuth plane (H-plane), respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]