Prototype design of a dielectrically embedded mesh lens

Here we present a prototype design for a dielectrically embedded mesh lens consisting of stacked layers of printed circuit board (PCB) material and embedded copper elements. The dielectrically embedded mesh lens consists of layers of dielectric which contain sub-wavelength-dimension metal elements laid out in a grid fashion, and is both flat and lightweight. It has been demonstrated that the sizes of these metal elements can be varied according to their position in the apparatus, using models based on transmission line theory, to create a lens which focuses a plane wave at millimeter wavelength to a Gaussian beam with very low transmission loss, even without the use of antireflective coating. We present the phase design for our lens which was designed, using transmission line theory and electromagnetic modelling software, to operate at 20GHz. We further present an analysis of the transmission line components which will make up the lens.