Beam Scanning of Silicon Lens Antennas Using Integrated Piezomotors at Submillimeter Wavelengths

This paper presents a lens antenna that scans the beam using an integrated piezomotor at submillimeter-wave frequencies. The lens antenna is based on the concept presented by Llombart et al. in 2011, a leaky-wave waveguide feed in order to achieve wide angle scanning and seamless integration with the receiver. The lens is translated from the origin of the waveguide producing the scanning of the beam over a 50° field of view (FoV) (or about 6.25 beamwidths) with a maximum scanning loss of 1 dB. The lens movement is achieved with a piezoelectric motor that is integrated within the antenna and receiver block. A prototype was built and measured at 550 GHz achieving scanning beam angles close to 20° with only 0.6 dB of loss. The scanning of the 50° FoV, which corresponds to a lens displacement of approximately 2 mm, takes about 0.9 s achieving a scanning rate of 0.75 Hz of the FoV. The accuracy in continuous mode of the piezoactuator has been measured to be less than 28 μm in the worse of cases for displacements of 2 mm, which corresponds to a beam steering of 0.76°, much smaller than the antenna half-power beamwidth of 8°.