Methods of Printing Passive Analog Beamforming Devices

Analog beamforming is the process of controlling the amplitude and phase distribution across an antenna array to produce focused EM radiation. There are many ways of accomplishing this, but this thesis focuses on printing techniques to produce beamforming devices. The methods of production used for this work includes 3D polymer printing, PCB fabrication and knife tracing with copper cladding and tape. Three types of devices are designed and fabricated for this work including Luneburg lenses, Butler matricies and ferroelectric varactors. The Luneburg lenses are produced through 3D printing processes and measured in the far-field using with an anechoic chamber. Two different Butler matricies are designed and presented, one is designed at 2.4 GHz on Rogers 3006 substrate and fabricated using a knife tracing printing process. Radiation pattern measurements are made for this matrix in the far-field using an anechoic chamber.