Composite right/left-handed transmission line leaky-wave antenna using LTCC technology

Abstract

In this paper, a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line (TL) structure is used for the design of broadband leaky-wave antenna, using Low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology. The proposed CRLH TL unit cell consists of a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor to realize left-handed (LH) series capacitance and a shorted-stub shunt arm to realize LH shunt inductance and total three cells are used for the antenna design. The proposed antenna has very compact size (total size; 24.2 mm x 25 mm, unit cell size p is 7.2 mm, p ≈ λg/9). This antenna is designed for wide bandwidth and omni-directional radiation pattern. The measured result shows that the prototype antenna has wide impedance band-width of 100 %, near omni directional radiation pattern and maximum gain of − 0.3 dBi. The proposed small antenna structure can be applied to RF/MMIC applications.