On the Design of a Dual Polarized Leaky Lens Antenna for Wideband FPA Applications

Abstract

This contribution presents the design and measurements of a wideband dual polarized leaky lens antenna. The antenna is composed of two crossed slots fed by two orthogonal microstrips. The crossed microstrips are fed differentially in order to couple the radiation into the slots. Then the slot antenna feeds a dielectric lens to achieve directive patterns. In this work, the proposed leaky lens antenna is optimized to achieve high aperture efficiency with clean symmetric patterns in both polarizations exceeding an octave bandwidth to be used for tightly spaced wideband Focal Plane Arrays (FPAs). The concept is validated by the primary field measurements inside the lens and by the GRASP simulations of the FPA.