High-Gain All-Metal 3-D Printed Lens–Horn Antenna for Millimeter-Wave Applications

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Abstract
A high-gain all-metal lens-horn antenna for millimeter-wave applications is proposed in this letter. Unlike the conventional metal lens horn, the proposed lens horn can theoretically achieve an arbitrary focal diameter ratio ( F/D ), which can further shorten the length of the horn antenna. Considering the design difficulty of the feed, in practice, the focal-to-diameter ratio generally needs to be greater than 0.4. To further reduce the overall height of the antenna, the lens can be kept at a certain thickness according to the Fresnel-lens principle. To demonstrate the proposed theory, a lens-horn antenna with a focal diameter ratio of 0.7 and an aperture area of π×93.75 2 mm 2 is designed, fabricated, and tested. In order to reduce the processing costs and difficulties, the antenna is processed by metal 3D printed technology. The test results indicate that the antenna achieves a peak gain of 30.8 dBi and 3-dB gain bandwidth of 22.5% (28.4-34.5GHz). The length of the proposed antenna can be reduced by about 68% compared to the horn antennas without lenses. The proposed antenna has the characteristics of high gain, compact structure, and low cost, which is suitable for high-power millimeter-wave applications.
Funding Information
  • Chengdu Municipal Science and Technology Program (2019-YF08- 00173-GX)

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