An improved design method of Rotman lens antennas

A Rotman lens is used to feed a linear array antenna for wideband use. A relationship between design parameters for realizing a Rotman lens has been derived by introducing a new design variable. The design method which minimizes the phase error on the aperture of the linear array antenna has been shown. For large array length, the above phase error due to this method becomes considerably smaller than that due to a conventional method. This improved method makes it possible to design small and low-loss Rotman lens antennas.