Fully Dielectric Phased Array for Beamsteering Using Liquid Crystal Technology at W-Band

In this work, we present a liquid crystal based fully dielectric phased array for beamsteering at W-Band. The array consists of 1 x 4 tapered dielectric rod antennas, including liquid crystal phase shifters and a single multimode interference power divider as feeding network. With this approach, a fully dielectric beamsteering antenna is realized in a very lightweight, compact and low-loss design. Each rectangular phase shifter has a tapered dielectric rod antenna at its end. For beamsteering, dielectric subwavelength phase shifters are filled with a novel liquid crystal mixture. The realized demonstrator achieved a maximum scanning range of ± 10°. Moreover, the measured antenna gain is ranging between 13dB to 14dB with a side lobe level below – dB. The input reflection coefficient is below –10 dB over the whole W-band.