Origami-Inspired Phased Arrays Are Reshaping the Future of Antennas

• This is extremely academic. Reinventing flex circuits on a 3D printer??

  AFAICT they built exactly one "unit cell" and there's no way that SPI interconnect scales to an array
  -- jpm_sd Reply

• Cool stuff, this kind of phased array antenna is also how modern radars work without moving parts.
  -- ranger_danger Reply
• Did you read the article? This type of phased array has a rather large number of moving parts, including a number of folding GHz transmission lines. Personally, I'm very skeptic whether we'll ever see this design outside of bespoke high performance applications.

  The fact that this is very cool doesn't change the huge advantage classic planar phased arrays have by literally having zero moving parts.
  -- pbmonster Reply

• Which part of the array is movable, exactly?

  The article did not describe a movable array. There are folds, sure, but they seem entirely static. And the only time it was even mentioned is when deploying it via satellites (unfolding the array into a particular configuration).
  -- mynameisvlad Reply

• To quote the section "Eggbox Phased Array":

  > This unit cell, like an origami design, may be folded across either axis or laid flat, allowing you to physically change the direction of radiation. Because the phased array antenna on each face can steer the beam further, the antenna can be utilized to generate almost any radiation pattern using a combination of physical folding and electronic beam steering.

  To me "physically change the direction of radiation" is rather explicit that the antenna isn't static.
  -- b3orn Reply