Low-cost mechanically steered millimeter-wave lens antenna system for indoor LANs

The expected need in the near-future to increase the data rate of personal communication systems up to a few GBit/s, calls for the possibility to explore the millimeter wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum especially for very short range indoor radio links to replace for instance the current Bluetooth or other domestic Personal Area Networks (PANs). High gain antennas in the order of 20 dBi are required to favor the link budget at these frequencies, but the antenna directionality limits user mobility unless at least one antenna in the link can automatically track the other antenna. A new antenna concept that is appropriate for this objective was recently developed by the authors. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the complete concept by integrating the developed antenna with a simplified RF front-end for data transmission, along with the tracking control system and required algorithms so that a fully operational video transmission can be accomplished with this wireless mm-wave system using low-cost solutions.