Abstract
This letter presents a mechanical beam steering array antenna (MBSA) with tunable height elements. Each antenna element is composed of a U-slot radiation patch and a stepper motor supported by the three-dimensional-printed structure. By controlling the height of each antenna element using a stepper motor, an arbitrary phase shift value in the range of 0°∼360° can be achieved. In addition, steering high-gain beams can be generated by flexibly adjusting the height of each antenna element. A prototype of 8 × 8 MBSA was designed and fabricated to realize beam scanning in the pitch angle range from −40° to 40° in the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">xoz-</i> plane and near-field focusing. The measured gain of MBSA is 23.3 dBi with an aperture efficiency of 85.7% at 10 GHz. The proposed MBSA has the advantages of simple structure, low cost and high stability, which can be applied in satellite communication systems.
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