Ultra-wideband flat metamaterial GRIN lenses assisted with additive manufacturing technique

The paper presents the designs of ultra-wideband microwave flat gradient index (GRIN) lenses, which realizes over a 108% fractional bandwidth (12 - 40 GHz). The frequency-independent ray optics method is employed to determine the radially varying permittivity profile of the lenses. The challenge of realizing such a radially varying profile, and the limitations in dielectric material choices, are overcome by two additive-manufacturing-aided approaches: (i) partially infilled dielectrics with a varied periodicity, which ensures the lens performance at the higher end of the frequency range; and (ii) artificially engineered dielectrics (AED) with sub-wavelength-scale metallic inclusions, which enables high permittivity dielectrics and leads to benefits of thickness and mass reduction for the GRIN lenses. Measured results demonstrate that the GRIN lenses improve the gain of open-ended waveguide sources by 8.7 to 15.6 dB over a wide frequency range from 12 to 40 GHz, with the realized gain of up to 23.6 dBi. Both the simulation and measurements of the presented design confirm the potential of implementing the proposed GRIN lens design in high directivity and beamforming antenna applications, across an ultra-wideband frequency range.