Is it really "heating" used for beam scanning in Echodyne's radar?

Is it really heating or just a misinterpretation?

reference:

https://techxplore.com/news/2016-11-...zed-radar.html

Yes, it really uses heating to shape the beam, replacing a phased array method. More information here:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...ry-drones-need

"...Echodyne, a Seattle-area startup backed by investors that include Bill Gates and Paul Allen, announced that it was working on a new type of radar about the size of a cellphone with performance that’s much more like the fancy phased-array radars that the military uses while costing a tenth as much or less..."

Always I had doubts in getting good REAL performances of metamaterial antennas, but these guys looks they found one good milking cow...or more

Searched for "heater phase shifter" and found some papers, for example: http://orbit.dtu.dk/files/4359773/Pu.pdf
Interesting if something similar could be done on a substrate with large Er(t) dependency. Some current may be applied to thin high impedance lines and provide some phase shift.

It looks like a multi element phased array, where the elements are spaced out electrically with different time delays. As you sweep the frequency, each time delay imparts a different phase shift, so you can scan the antenna from left to right.

It is a very old concept, radars in the 1950's used this, albeit with metal waveguides providing the time delay elements.