Design, Fabrication and Measurement of a Millimeter Wave Fresnel Lens using Additive Manufacturing

The design, fabrication and measurement of a 3D-printed Fresnel lens is presented. A dielectric characterization of polylactic acid material prior to simulation and fabrication of the lens is introduced. A full-wave simulation is used to design and optimize the gain of the lens. The focal length of the lens is chosen to be 40 mm. Fused deposition modeling is adopted to manufacture the lens. The final fabricated model is composed of 4 full-wave zones with 3 subzones and 1 supporting layer. The structure has 16 annular rings with maximum radius of 69.3 mm. Also., it has the thickness of 11.8 mm. The gain pattern measurements are performed in an anechoic chamber. The results show that the lens achieves a gain enhancement of 9 dB at 30 GHz.