Focal Plane Array of Shaped Quartz Lenses for Wide Field-of-view Sub-millimeter Imaging Systems

Journal article (2023)

Authors

H. Zhang Tera-Hertz Sensing - EEMCS
Shahab Oddin Dabironezare Tera-Hertz Sensing - EEMCS
J.J.A. Baselmans SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Tera-Hertz Sensing - EEMCS
Nuria Llombart Tera-Hertz Sensing - EEMCS
Research Group
Tera-Hertz Sensing (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2023 H. Zhang, Shahab Oddin Dabironezare, J.J.A. Baselmans, Nuria Llombart
DOI
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https://doi.org/10.1109/TAP.2023.3334391
Focal plane arrays (FPAs) Lens antennas Lens shaping Leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) Field correlation Quartz lenses Sub-millimeter imaging
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Published Date

2023

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Microelectronics

Research Group

Tera-Hertz Sensing

Abstract

Large format focal plane arrays (FPAs) of dielectric lenses are promising candidates for wide field-of-view submillimeter imagers. In this work, we optimize the scanning gain of such imagers via shaping lens surfaces. We develop an optimization procedure using a field correlation technique between the fields generated by a reflector on the top of the lenses and those generated by the lens feeds. Based on this procedure, an FPA of quartz lens antennas combined with leaky-wave feeds is designed to efficiently illuminate the reflector, achieving a directivity of 50.5 dBi up to scanning 20.3°. The obtained scanning gain loss of 2.6 dB is much lower than that associated with the direct fields coming from the reflector (about 6 dB). The proposed FPA is validated by full-wave simulations with excellent agreement. We have fabricated and measured an example shaped quartz lens optimized for the scanning angle of 20.3° at 180 GHz. The comparison between the simulations and the measurements also shows excellent agreement.