Beam Shaping Performance Based on Metallic Corrugated Grooves and Dielectric Periodic Gratings at 500 GHz

Abstract

Modern terahertz (THz) receiver used for radio astronomy is aimed at developing high integrated system. However, various THz integrated devices, such as quantum cascade lasers and chip antennas, exist weaknesses of poor radiation quality and beam divergence. Currently, this disadvantage is generally improved by dielectric lens or reflectors, which increasing the bulk volume immensely. In this paper, the beam manipulating properties of metallic corrugated grooves and dielectric periodic gratings are discussed based on the physical principles of surface plasmon and electrical leaky-wave numerically. Furthermore, the prototypes of bull-eye antennas and leaky-wave antennas operating at 500 GHz are proposed by micro-electro-mechanical system process and laser technology to demonstrate the beam shaping effectiveness, respectively. The E-plane patterns measured through a THz vector field measurement system experimentally are in good agreement with the simulations. Both the developed periodical structures will have a large superiority on applications for maneuvering pulse- or beam-shapes of THz radiation with compact and low profiles.

Keywords

• Beam shaping characteristic
• leaky-wave antenna
• micromachining
• surface plasmon (SP)
• terahertz (THz)