A High-Gain and Broadband Optically- Transparent Liquid Antenna With Plate Dielectric Lens

In this paper, a high-gain wideband optically-transparent liquid antenna loaded with plate dielectric lens is proposed. The gain of the antenna is improved by loading plate dielectric lens above the pure water patch antenna. The patch and the ground are realized by wrapping pure water in transparent plexiglass, and the dielectric lens is composed of transparent ionic liquids and plexiglass. Therefore, the whole antenna is almost transparent except the metal feed structure. The antenna can achieve 39 % impedance bandwidth for vertical bar S-11 vertical bar < - 10 dB in the range of 12 - 18 GHz, and the radiation efficiency is almost 60 %. Due to the loading of plate dielectric lens, the gain of the antenna can be increased to 13.2 dBi. The designed liquid antenna has the advantages of wideband, high gain, high radiation efficiency, optical transparency and low cost.