Comparison of luneburg lens antennas made from homogeneous material

Abstract

In this article a comparison is made of the cylindrical Luneburg lens of inhomogeneous dielectric filling with the lens made from the material with a constant value of the dielectric permittivity with introduced discontinuities. The comparison is carried out based on electromagnetic modeling in ANSYS Electronics Desktop-HFSS, with the creation of full-size models. The main stages of creating models and design difficulties are described in detail. Results obtained for the cylindrical Luneburg lens fed by an 80×40 mm2 open-ended waveguide, top and bottom is limited to metal plates separated 40 mm from each other, the radius of the lens is 237 mm, the frequency of analysis is 3 GHz. In partially filled dielectric layers of the cylindrical lens, the dielectric used has a constant value of dielectric permittivity equal to 2.6, which corresponds to the common plastics used for 3D-printing.