Mechanical Beam Steering Array Antenna With Tunable Height

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 thexoz-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.