A Concept of Adaptive Focusing using a Rotman Lens for Detecting Buried Structures

A new concept of adaptive focusing, using a Rotman lens, is presented in this paper. A Rotman lens is a microwave lens which is able to focus microwave power on its focal arc or generate multiple beams. By adding the array of phase shifters between a Rotman lens and antenna elements, the wavefront can be adaptively modulated to focus objects distributed in short range rather than far-field zone. From the optical point of view, the propagations of the lens have been simplified from the Fresnel diffraction integral to the Fourier transform. Using Fourier Transform, a beam propagation method has been developed to show improvement of the resolution by controlling wavefront of wave propagating from an aperture-type antenna array. The beam width(or spot size) and intensity have been calculated for a focused beam propagating from an array having $10{\lambda}$ of its size. For the beam with $20{\lambda},\;30{\lambda}$, and $50{\lambda}$ of geometrical focal length, the half-power beamwidth (spot size) is about $1.1{\lambda},\;1.3{\lambda}$, and $1.9{\lambda}$, respectively.