Design of a metamaterial Luneburg lens antenna based on 3D printing technology

Luneburg lens antenna has good directional and beam scanning properties which make it widely used in the field of radar antennas. In order to reduce the manufacture difficulty of the layered Luneburg lens, a Luneburg lens antenna based on periodic metamaterial units is proposed in this paper. the air-to-medium volume ratio of the unit structure in different positions is changed to meet the dielectric constant distribution requirement. Using 3D printing technology, a 50 mm radius Luneburg lens antenna is manufactured and tested. The results show that the gain of the Luneburg lens antenna at 10GHz is 14.98 dB, which is increased by 7.41 dB compared with a single waveguide feed. The antenna has good dynamic scanning characteristic, since the gain changes slightly with the scanning angle. The validity and feasibility of the analysis and design of the metamaterial Luneburg lens antenna are proved.