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International audience; We describe the design, fabrication and measurements of an axisymmetric dielectric lens, featuring a sectorial radiation pattern at 77 GHz. It will be used as the primary feed of a lens-based compact antenna test range (CATR). Due to symmetry of revolution, the sectorial lens profile can be designed in one dimension by using phase only control. The phase variation is echoed on the lens depth. The resulting stepped lens is simulated using France Telecom Orange Labs SRSRD software (¿in-house¿ software developed for dielectric axisymmetric radiating structures) and measured in an anechoic chamber at 77 GHz. Two lenses were fabricated with different materials: PVC and polyurethane, respectively. Good agreements were obtained between simulations and measurements. Less than 0.2 dB ripple in the central beam are obtained for the polyurethane lens although relatively high secondary lobes occur at 11°. Comparisons between the near field of a CATR illuminated by a small horn providing a uniform amplitude taper and the sectorial lens are conducted using numerical simulations. Results show that on-axis oscillations are reduced from 6 to 1 dB with the sectorial lens.

A powerful iterative method is presented for the synthesis of arbitrary reconfigurable antenna arrays. The algorithm yields very good results also for arrays consisting of a large number of elements. The reconfigurability is achieved by phase-only control. The excitation amplitudes may be different for different array elements, and are not preassigned, but are optimized. Furthermore, the electric field vanishes in a number of prescribed points located in the near-field region, so that a strong field reduction is obtained in a neighborhood of them.