A Ka-Band Multilayer Beaming-Scanning Antenna Using Liquid Crystals

This letter presents a Ka-band multilayer beaming-scanning antenna based on the electronically controlled liquid crystal (LC) phase shifter and proposes a new integrated and miniaturized LC antenna structure. The antenna is composed of four planar magnetoelectric dipole antenna units, four LC-based reflective phase shifters, and the power divider network, including the bias loading and dc blocking circuits. An external four-channel adjustable power module is designed with the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to output the independent control and continuous adjustment bias voltage. It has overall dimensions of 35 mm $\times 50$ mm $\times 2.5$ mm, which operates at 35 GHz. Measured results demonstrate that by adjusting each phase of the LC-based phase shifter through the power module, the structural and functional LC array achieves the one-dimensional (1-D) scanning angle from $-22^\circ$ to $+23^\circ$ and the main lobe gain is 6.7 dBi.