An SLS-Printed Luneburg Lens Spherical mmID for 5G Cyberphysical Systems

This work demonstrates a first of its kind selective laser sintering (SLS) -printed Luneburg lens mmID system with greater than state of the art angular coverage. A novel SLS-enabled hole unit cell is leveraged to create a smoother dielectric gradient Luneburg lens than traditional multilayered discrete shell methods, enhancing lens focalization. Inkjet printed, conformal, cross-polarized mmID patches are flexed at the bend radius of the lens to maintain consistent realized gain and enable the extreme coverage in solid angle. The mmID system demonstrates an unprecedented solid angle coverage of 4.62 sr and can be detected up to 30 m at an operating frequency of 28 GHz. This approach enables integration of mmID systems with applications in sensor swarms in smart cities, floating sensing platforms, and wide view cyberphysical systems.