Dielectric Lens Antenna for Industrial Radar Applications

Industrial radar applications like tank level measurement is an important research and application area in radar technology. Radar level measurement is a safe solution even under extreme process conditions (pressure, temperature) and vapors. Special antennas are required to meet electromagnetic requirements such as high gain, low sidelobe level and high bandwidth. The small side-beam level and narrow main beam primarily minimize reflections from the side of the tank, while the bandwidth determines the distance resolution of the measurement system. Another requirement is a small size and good manufacturability of the antenna. The main promising solutions are the use of microstrip, horn or dielectric lens antennas for tank level measurement systems. After several tests, we have concluded that the optimal choice for tank level radar measurement task, in terms of integrability and antenna parameters, is a dielectric antenna. The dielectric antenna has many other applications in modern mobile systems as 5 and 6 G systems where these antennas are elements of antenna arrays of beamforming or MIMO systems. In this paper, a special dielectric lens antenna is presented, satisfying main requirements, namely a circular antenna cross section, high antenna aperture efficiency and low sidelobe level. The center frequency of the antenna is 26 GHz with a band width of 1 GHz. The paper presents the analytic investigation and design of the dielectric lens antenna and the circular wave guide transition in detail. The electromagnetic design of the antenna was carried out using CST Microwave Studio 3D software.