3-D Printed 3-D Near-Field Focus-Scanning Lens for Terahertz Applications

作者：Wu, Geng-Bo; Zeng, Yuan-Song; Chan, Ka Fai; Qu, Shi-Wei; Shaw, Jeffrey; Chan, Chi Hou^*

来源：IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2022, 70(11): 10007-10016.

DOI：10.1109/TAP.2022.3209174

• 3-D printing
• focus steering
• imaging
• lens
• near-field-focus (NFF)
• reconfigurable
• terahertz (THz)

This article introduces a novel near-field focus (NFF) lens antenna with a three-dimensional (3-D) focus-steering capability operating at terahertz (THz) frequencies. The antenna consists of a pair of thin discrete dielectric lenses (DDLs) placed above a stationary feed horn. First, we demonstrate that the DDL doublet's in-plane synchronous counter-rotation and co-rotation could scan its focus radially and azimuthally, respectively. A multi-focus synthesis method that compensates the required transmission phases at multi-focus points is developed to further improve its NFF-steering performance. The DDL-based antenna can realize 3-D focus-scanning using a combination of rotation and linear translation mechanisms. The 3-D printing is adopted to fabricate the THz antenna to simplify the manufacturing process and reduce the cost. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the 15 mm-diameter antenna prototype can scan its focus in a 3-D cylindrical space with a diameter of 29 mm and a length of 8 mm at 300 GHz. The proposed 3-D focus-scanning antenna with a large field of view (FoV) of 72 degrees will open new avenues for fast 3-D THz imaging applications.

• 单位
  电子科技大学