[colechristensen]

>It does do directional steering. No active array components or physical movement are needed.

By... plugging and unplugging antenna elements?

It makes a fixed directional antenna element array which is configurable to a small degree by choosing which antenna elements to connect and their spatial arrangement.

The radiation pattern can only change by physically plugging or moving antenna elements.

[grahamburger]

It can be changed electronically and is commonly used that way in LTE and Wi-Fi implementations of Beamforming.

[Intralexical]

> By... plugging and unplugging antenna elements?

No. The antenna elements are always plugged in the same way. By sampling/introducing the signal at a different physical position on the lens (or multiple positions simultaneously), you create different physical distances and phase shifts for each element, and therefore a different beam direction.

...Apropos of nothing, this reminds me that a long ago, I played on a Minecraft server where one of the boys made a piston display with controlled by a pressure plate array. I was shocked by how he managed to transmit the signal with a simple wire. Maybe it was a similar idea, using the propagation distance...

[colechristensen]

>By sampling/introducing the signal at a different physical position on the lens

Which is accomplished with active components (or multiple frontends). The word "active" is carrying a lot of weight in what isn't actually that important of a distinction