Wide-angle beam scanning leaky-wave antenna using spoof surface plasmon polaritons structure

Abstract

This paper proposes a wide-angle beam scanning leaky-wave antenna (LWA) fed by a novel spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPP) transmission line (TL). In the proposed LWA, circular metallic patches are periodically loaded on both sides of the SSPP TL alternately, and convert guided waves into radiating waves. The transmission characteristics of the proposed SSPP TL are analyzed, and the transmission characteristics and radiation patterns of the proposed LWA are simulated and measured. The simulated and measured results show that the proposed LWA provides approximately 12.5 dBi of radiation gain within a frequency range of 8–24 GHz, and a beam scanning range of 90 ? from forward to backward continuously by increasing the feeding frequency. The proposed LWA, based on a novel SSPP TL, has advantages of single-layer conductor, continuous wide-angle beam scanning, and high gain especially at the broadside direction, which are difficult realize using conventional LWAs. © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.