Design and Development of a High-Gain Broadband Balanced Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna Using a 3D-Printed Shaped Dielectric Lens

A broadband balanced antipodal Vivaldi antenna (BAVA) has been reported along with a novel 3D-printed shaped dielectric lens (SDL) for aiding in gain enhancement, largely towards the higher frequencies. The complete BAVA with SDL (BAVA-SDL) structure exhibits a broad simulated bandwidth of 3.8 GHz to over 60 GHz (
$\mathbf { > }15.8$
:1). The 3D SDL enables an ever-increasing gain profile by compensating for the large phase errors that occur particularly at higher frequencies over a wide range of 45–60 GHz. The maximum simulated broadside gain reaches 24 dBi at 54 GHz. A Digital Light Processing (DLP) based 3D printing technique has been used to fabricate the SDL, where periodic unit lattice cells with air inclusions have been implemented for manipulating the corresponding relative permittivity. Measurements could be carried out until 45 GHz due to limitations from the fabrication process. Nevertheless, the measured results were found to be in very good agreement with their simulated counterparts.