Liquid Crystal Based Fully Dielectric Lateral Wave Beam Steering Antenna

This paper presents a fully dielectric beam steering lateral antenna operating at V-Band (50 to 75 GHz). The antenna consists of a semicircular Rexolite body with an embedded liquid crystal (LC) cavity. An electrode network is used in order to align the LC molecules such that they form reconfigurable areas of high and low permittivity. The area of high permittivity is used to steer the direction of the beam. Due to the dielectric nature of the antenna, it shows enhanced fabrication simplicity and a weight reduction factor of 21 when compared to previous work. In addition, the bias electrodes may have arbitrary shape and are easily accessable, ensuring a high versatility for future designs. The steering mechanism is nearly frequency independent and the antenna is matched throughout the whole frequency range. Beam steering angles of 17° are reported with a gain of 16 dBi and a maximum side lobe level (SLL) of −7.6 dB.