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 16x equidistant points which not only yields spatial power combining but also allows the progressive phase changes to steer the beam in +/- 45 degrees 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 degrees. 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 degrees for all frequencies. Besides, the half power beamwidth is 6 and 10 degrees in elevation (E-plane) and azimuth plane (H-plane), respectively.