WirelessHD [1] is a new standard supported by several leading companies in consumer
electronic products. The standard allocates 7 GHz of spectrum around 60 GHz for high
bit rate (<4 Gb/s) short range (<10 m) wireless communications. The main target
application is indoor line of sight transmission of uncompressed high definition video
signal between multimedia devices like TV, Blu-ray players, camcorders, etc. At 60 GHz
the walls high attenuation helps to limit interference with similar systems operating in
neighboring rooms. To enhance the link budget between terminals, high gain antennas
(>20 dBi) are required which consequently forces the adoption of steerable beam
capability into the antennas in order to automatically point the radiation pattern beam in
the direction of the other terminal.
A collimating lens in front of a radiating element is a common configuration to increase
the total gain of an antenna [2]. The authors have previously presented a 60 GHz compact
mechanically beam-steerable configuration were a collimated beam lens pivots in front of
a single stationary feed, without the need of rotary joints [3], [4]. Simple tilting of the
lens and its rotation about the feed axis allows elevation and azimuth scan of the beam.
However, initial designs were performed with an elliptical dome lens which had a gain
scan loss of about 2dB for a beam tilt of -25º to 25º. The elliptical lens has a fixed shape
single refracting surface and so it allows no optimization. Using the same general
concept, in this paper a new lens is proposed with two refracting surfaces that are
optimized to minimize the lens scan loss value and to achieve up to 45º beam tilt angles.