A 3D-Printing Quasi-Ellipsoidal Lens Antenna

A unique 3D-printing quasi-ellipsoidal dielectric lens antenna with high gain is proposed in this work for Ka-band application. For proof of concept, the quasi-ellipsoidal dielectric lens antenna consists of a waveguide and dielectric lens (DL). The DL consists of a hemisphere and a spherical cap with the same size of contacting plane as the hemisphere, which has different permittivity of 2.9 and 3.9, respectively. The simulation results show that the designed lens antenna not only has excellent electrical performance with an average |S11| < -14 dB in the bandwidth of 26-30 GHz, but also has the merit of greatly improving antenna gain. The quasi-ellipsoidal DL with a long axis of 50 mm and a short axis of 42 mm can increase the gain of the waveguide from 6.7 dBi to about 20 dBi.