Design of a Rotman Lens Operating in the Full K/K-a Band Using Ridge Waveguide Technology

Several services associated with satellite on the move and 5G applications are populating the K and K-a frequency bands. Beam forming networks are crucial components for achieving the necessary beam flexibility and agility of these systems. The Rotman lens is being widely investigate as a cost-effective solution for overcoming the main limitations of other types of beam forming networks, namely bandwidth, complexity, and size. One of the main design challenges is obtaining broadband transitions for the array and beam ports. In this work, we used a standard K/K-a double ridge (WRD180) for interfacing with the Rotman Lens. The main motivation for this choice is the wide bandwidth, compatible with the K/K-a satcom frequency bands, and the use of air/vacuum propagation medium in the parallel plate waveguide section to avoid dielectric losses associated with microstrip implementations. We present a design capable of fully exploiting the ridge waveguide bandwidth with wide beam scanning, outperforming previous works. The presented design consists of a 13x7 Rotman Lens with a scanning range of +/- 50 degrees operating between 16 and 40 GHz, validated through full-wave simulations.