A 1-D Submm-wave Leaky-Wave Phased Array using MEMS Phase Shifters

Abstract

Beam-scanning of submillimeter-wave spectrometers and radiometers have traditionally been implemented using mechanical scanning mechanisms due to the absence of lowloss electronic phase shifters. Recently developed waveguideintegrated MEMS phase shifters are paving the way to realize electronic beam-steering using submm-wave phased arrays. In this work, two phased array demonstrators are presented that operate from 500GHz to 600GHz. A 20 dB directivity 8 ? 1 leaky-wave antenna array will be demonstrated, using fixed waveguide feeding networks, to be capable of ?20? scanning with a scan loss less than 1:7 dB. Secondly, an equivalent but smaller 17 dB directivity 4 ? 1 array will be integrated with MEMS phase shifters to demonstrate a dynamic scanning capability over a ?9:5? range. The antenna array is based on closely sampled square waveguides, terminated with a double-iris, in close proximity of a low permittivity superstrate in order to reduce the grating lobes at larger scanning angles. Measurements are expected to be presented at the conference.