Hybrid Additive Manufacturing of a Dielectric Resonator Phased Array Antenna at K Band

Abstract

The feasibility of utilizing hybrid additive manufacturing (AM) techniques to design and manufacture low-cost and wideband phased array antennas for SatCom is studied. A multi-mode dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with engineered permittivity in an eight-element linear array configuration is designed, manufactured, and experimentally verified through impedance and far-field measurements. Furthermore, beamforming with a commercially available integrated circuit is demonstrated. The impact of print settings on the properties of utilized materials is measured and considered in the antenna design. Although individual elements suffer from degraded performance, the averaged phased array antenna element covers the full K-band SatCom downlink band between 17.7 - 21.2 GHz with an input reflection coefficient smaller -10dB. The averaged embedded element pattern provides a realized gain of about 3dB and a half-power beamwidth of 81 degrees. Great potential of the hybrid AM and DRA technology combination for further utilization in mmWave phased array applications is revealed.