Backward-to-Forward Wide-Angle Fast Beam-Scanning Leaky-Wave Antenna With Consistent Gain

A planar periodic leaky-wave antenna (PLWA) with continuous backward-to-forward beam-scanning capability and consistent gain is presented. The PLWA is made of a new type of periodically arranging meander line structures, in which the capacitive coupling between neighboring units plays the key role in achieving a high scanning rate. In detail, the beam-scanning rate of the proposed PLWA is efficiently tuned by varying the gap between two adjacent units, without considerably changing the working frequency band. To mitigate the open stopband (OSB) and to improve the impedance matching, several inductive open stubs are introduced into a single meander line unit cell to enhance the radiation. In the experiment, a prototype of the proposed PLWA was fabricated and measured. The simulated and measured beams show good agreement in terms of scanning range and radiation performance. A continuous beam scanning from -60 degrees to +58 degrees through broadside in the frequency band of 5.95-7.1 GHz is observed, and hence, a 102.6 degrees/GHz scanning rate is realized in practice. Besides, the PLWA shows an average gain level of 11.96 dBi with a variation lower than 2 dB and a sidelobe below -10 dB at all the measured frequencies. The proposed PLWA may have potential applications in radar, microwave imaging, and wireless communication due to its compact structure, easy to fabricate, and dispersionless performance.