Design of Maximum-Gain Dielectric Lens Antenna via Phase Center Analysis

In this work, a method is presented to maximize the gain of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) lens antennas using phase center analysis. This analysis is required when the underlying radiator antenna is not a point source, especially for the cases of arrays. Commonly, for designing a lens antenna, the lens is simply positioned on top of antenna radiator, which is may not always provide the optimum gain and aperture efficiency. A solution is proposed, where the lens will be placed at a distance calculated using the phase center analysis to produce the maximum gain from the lens-antenna systems. A mm-wave microstrip antenna array is designed, and the proposed method is applied for the gain enhancement. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme obtains around 25% gain enhancement compared to the traditional method.