{"title":"Active Retrodirective Rotman Lens Antenna for Wide-Angle RCS Enhancement","authors":"Hanieh Kiani Amiri;Michal Okoniewski","doi":"10.1109/OJAP.2025.3554043","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents measurement results and analysis of an innovative active retrodirective Rotman lens antenna architecture, designed to enhance the radar cross-section (RCS) for backscattering applications. Unlike conventional passive retrodirective systems, our design integrates custom-designed reflection amplifiers to significantly boost backscattered signal gain while maintaining low DC power consumption. A novel biasing technique enables independent phase and gain control of the amplifiers, ensuring a uniform array response and reducing DC power consumption by approximately 30%. Experimental monostatic RCS measurements at 5.15 GHz with a linearly polarized incident wave demonstrate a uniform RCS response over a ±40° scan angle. The integration of reflection amplifiers enhances backscattering, allowing the lens to maintain a consistent −0.5 dB RCS across the entire scan angle, which is 9 dB higher than the average RCS of a metal plate with the same effective aperture. The compact design (approximately <inline-formula> <tex-math>$6\\lambda \\times 6\\lambda $ </tex-math></inline-formula>) and ultra-low power consumption (approximately 0.19 mW) make this system well-suited for low-power radar applications, such as mm-wave automotive radar sensors. These results confirm the feasibility of active-loaded phase conjugating systems for high-performance backscattering applications.","PeriodicalId":34267,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation","volume":"6 3","pages":"894-901"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10937983","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10937983/","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper presents measurement results and analysis of an innovative active retrodirective Rotman lens antenna architecture, designed to enhance the radar cross-section (RCS) for backscattering applications. Unlike conventional passive retrodirective systems, our design integrates custom-designed reflection amplifiers to significantly boost backscattered signal gain while maintaining low DC power consumption. A novel biasing technique enables independent phase and gain control of the amplifiers, ensuring a uniform array response and reducing DC power consumption by approximately 30%. Experimental monostatic RCS measurements at 5.15 GHz with a linearly polarized incident wave demonstrate a uniform RCS response over a ±40° scan angle. The integration of reflection amplifiers enhances backscattering, allowing the lens to maintain a consistent −0.5 dB RCS across the entire scan angle, which is 9 dB higher than the average RCS of a metal plate with the same effective aperture. The compact design (approximately $6\lambda \times 6\lambda $ ) and ultra-low power consumption (approximately 0.19 mW) make this system well-suited for low-power radar applications, such as mm-wave automotive radar sensors. These results confirm the feasibility of active-loaded phase conjugating systems for high-performance backscattering applications.