Plano-Hyperbolic Lens for Wide-Angle Beam Steering
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional Luneburg lenses are difficult and expensive to manufacture, and their spherical shape makes them incompatible with planar antenna arrays, limiting their ability to steer beams effectively in imaging applications.
Innovation Solution
A Dielectric Plano-Hyperbolic lens with substantially flat surfaces and varying refractive index, allowing for beam steering by adjusting the position of a planar antenna while maintaining focus, is developed. This lens compensates for wave delays to ensure in-phase exit waves, enabling broader beam profiles and compatibility with planar arrays.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If a conventional Luneburg lens is used for beam steering, then beam focusing capability is improved, but manufacturing difficulty and cost increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The lens is divided into multiple discrete elements or layers, each with specific refractive index properties. This segmentation allows for easier manufacturing using standard materials and techniques while maintaining the overall focusing functionality of the Luneburg lens design.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent modifies the continuous refractive index gradient of the traditional Luneburg lens by using discrete refractive index values in different layers or regions. This parameter change from continuous to discrete enables practical manufacturing while preserving the essential beam focusing and steering capabilities.
2Measurement precision
If a spherical Luneburg lens is used, then beam focusing is achieved, but compatibility with planar antenna arrays is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms the symmetric spherical Luneburg lens into an asymmetric planar or flattened structure. This asymmetric transformation maintains the essential focusing functionality while enabling compatibility with planar antenna arrays and modern integrated circuit technologies.
Solution Approach 2:
The lens design transitions from a three-dimensional spherical geometry to a two-dimensional planar structure. This dimensional change preserves the beam focusing capability while enabling integration with planar antenna arrays and reducing overall system complexity.
3Adaptability or versatility
If beam steering through wide angle is performed, then scan range is improved, but beam width increases and resolution decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs dynamic beam steering mechanisms that adjust the effective optical path through the lens layers. This dynamic control allows for wide-angle scanning while maintaining constant beam width and spatial resolution across the entire scan range through real-time phase compensation.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution provides a cost-effective, flexible, and efficient beam steering capability, enhancing spatial resolution and range in imaging applications by allowing the use of planar antenna arrays with a flat lens that maintains beam width and directivity over a wide range of scan angles.
Implementation Method 1
the lens is a Dielectric Plano-Hyperbolic Lens with a profile designed for a material having a first refractive index such that it emits a beam with in-phase waves, but constructed with a material having a second refractive index such that the phase changes over the face of the beam profile
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus comprises a dielectric material having a first surface and a second surface with a varying thickness between the first surface and the second surface. The first surface has a substantially hyperbolic curved shape with a single vertex, and the second surface has a substantially planar shape. The combination of the substantially hyperbolic curved shape and the dielectric material is chosen to compensate for different delays in electromagnetic waves impinging the first surface and traveling through the dielectric material such that the electromagnetic waves exiting the dielectric material through the second surface after traversing the dielectric material have a phase profile either constant or varying smoothly from the center to the edge.