Bootlace lenses for curved arrays

A novel lens design method is introduced for curved radiating arrays, taking into account the fact that some of the elements of the curved radiating arrays do not make any significant contribution to the directions of some of the main beams, due to shadowing and directional patterns of the radiating antenna elements. With this method, the degrees of freedom available in designing the lenses are used to get correct phase fronts for a number of chosen directions for each of the points on the radiating array curve. For a chosen radiating array, the lengths of the transmission lines and the positions of the antenna elements on the inner surface are calculated such that the path lengths from a certain feed point to the phase fronts are equal to a predetermined constant, for a number of chosen phase fronts. These phase fronts are different for each of the elements and are chosen to be in the directions that the radiating elements illuminate. The results of a computer study showing the feasibility of these lenses are presented.< >