A novel method for short leaky-wave antennas to suppress the reflected wave

A method to suppress the back lobe of a short leaky-wave antenna (LWA) by using an aperture-fed patch antenna on the backside is demonstrated in this paper. The aperture-fed patch antenna is connected to the open end of the LWA. This design offers another radiation path of the reflected wave and creates another radiation pattern on the back plane of the substrate. Experimental results show that the suppression of the reflected wave can be 10 dB at 10.0 GHz with an LWA length of 6 cm (2 wavelengths). Compared to the conventional design, this novel structure can radiate as efficiently as LWA at a length a wavelengths. The two radiation patterns on different planes have great potential in many applications and can provide more flexibility to traditional designs. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.