Development of a Low-Cost THz Metallic Lens Antenna

In this letter, a terahertz (THz) antenna using metallic lens is proposed and investigated. The metallic lens structure using metallic waveguide delay lines has been adopted for the phase compensation and is used to feed a flare structure for enhancing the radiation gain. A prototype with a center working frequency of 412.5 GHz is designed and fabricated by using the low-cost commercial metal milling technology. Experiments show that the fabricated prototype has a return loss larger than 15 dB within the frequency bands of 370–460 GHz. The maximum measured gain is 27.6 dBi at 412.5 GHz. Good agreement between simulated and measured results is obtained. This letter demonstrates that the compact high-gain THz antenna can be realized by using the metallic lens structure with the low-cost commercial milling process.

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