Superconductive Microwave/Millimeter Wave Antenna

A High Temperature Superconducting Rotman lens is proposed as the preferred approach to replace the standard NxN phased array antenna for a beam forming microwave/millimeter wave antenna system. The Rotman lens approach requires significantly less interconnects and at the same time offers large bandwidth and simultaneous multichannel detections. Two orthogonal planar Rotman lenses with 2N detectors provides coverage equivalent to an NxN phased array with NxN detectors. Sierra and its partner TRW are also developing GHz superconducting digital frequency synthesizers and A/D converters, which will complement the proposed antenna program as additional required modules for the final antenna system. The Phase I effort includes antenna system requirement definition, antenna design using the optimal technologies, performance predictions, and fabrication and test of an HTS Rotman lens antenna demonstration breadboard.