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This paper presents a fully 3D-printed wideband mm-wave beam-steering antenna concept capable of performing wide-angle electronic beam-steering by making use of zigzagged lens antenna subarrays (LASs) with curved focal surfaces. The concept is demonstrated through the design and realization of a 38 GHz antenna consisting of L=4 dielectric slab waveguide (DSW) lenses each fed with structurally embedded M=6 TEM horn antennas, which can effectively reduce the required number of phase shifters (PSs) from N=M×L=24 to L=4 . It is demonstrated that the joint utilization of zigzagged LAS and curved focal surfaces with structurally integrated TEM horn antennas, all enabled through the design flexibilities offered by the emerging additive manufacturing (AM) technology, improves the realized gain, side lobe level (SLL), and beam-steering range in comparison to the earlier versions realized with planar focal surfaces. Specifically, the antenna exhibits a simulated realized gain of 16.5 dBi with an H-plane beam-steering range exceeding ±45° and a half-power beamwidth (HPBW) of 4.5° while maintaining an SLL below –9.3 dB across the entirety of the scan range. Measurements taken with the manufactured antenna prototype show excellent agreement with the performance obtained from full-wave simulations. 

A millimeter (mm)-wave beam steering antenna consisting of subarrays of parallel plate lenses is presented for the first time. As compared to a previously reported antenna that utilized subarrays of dielectric slab waveguide lenses, the presented antenna allows to design and control the beamwidth of the radiation pattern in the plane orthogonal to the beam steering plane by stacking the parallel plate lens subarrays. Additionally, full wave simulations of the presented antenna show performance improvements in gain, side lobe level, and field of view in comparison to the previously reported dielectric slab waveguide-based realization.