• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.1108-1115
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• 2004

A new type of a Rotman lens is presented in this paper fur millimeter-wave applications, such as collision avoidance radar. A dielectric slab Rotman lens is proposed to reduce the conductor loss and to create an appropriate farm for favorable implementation at millimeter-wave frequency. The proposed lens consists of a dielectric slab and slot lines whereas the conventional lenses are constructed with parallel conducting plates. The dielectric slab Rotman lens excited in TE$\_$0/ mode shows a high degree of confinement for the fields, low dispersion, and has an appropriate feed structure. A prototype lens has been designed and fabricated with 9 beam ports and 9 array ports together with 9 tapered slot antennas. This lens has been tested in the range from 10 GHz to 15 GHz and the measured beam widths are about 15$^{\circ}$ at 13 GHz. The measurements also show low mutual coupling between beam ports and an efficiency of about 34.6 %. The overall performance is comparable to that of conventional Rotman lenses even though the prototype was tested at lower than desired frequencies in the microwave frequency range due to our limited resources for fabrications and measurements. It is expected that at millimeter-wave frequency the dielectric slab Rotman lens will have lower conductor loss and lower mutual coupling than conventional Rotman lenses.an lenses.