Mechanical Beam Steering Array Antenna With Tunable Height

This letter presents a mechanical beam steering array antenna (MBSA) with tunable height elements. Each antenna element is composed of a U-slot radiation patch and a stepper motor supported by the three-dimensional-printed structure. By controlling the height of each antenna element using a stepper motor, an arbitrary phase shift value in the range of 0 degrees similar to 360 degrees can be achieved. In addition, steering high-gain beams can be generated by flexibly adjusting the height of each antenna element. A prototype of 8 x 8 MBSA was designed and fabricated to realize beam scanning in the pitch angle range from -40 degrees to 40 degrees in the xoz- plane and near-field focusing. The measured gain of MBSA is 23.3 dBi with an aperture efficiency of 85.7% at 10 GHz. The proposed MBSA has the advantages of simple structure, low cost and high stability, which can be applied in satellite communication systems.

Automated summary

This paper presents a mechanical beam steering array antenna with tunable height elements. By controlling the height of each antenna element, arbitrary phase shift values and high-gain beams can be achieved. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the antenna array in beam scanning and near-field focusing.