Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Leaky-Wave Antenna with Wide Beam Scanning Range

Abstract

In this paper, a novel compact leaky-wave antenna (LWA) with high gain, broadband and wide scanning range is proposed. This design is mainly based on traditional spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) slow-wave transmission line (TL). By modulating the spoof SPP slow-wave TL with sinusoidal periodic contour, one planar frequency beam scanning antenna (FBSA) is realized with "-1"-order harmonic mode and beam steering property, from backward direction through broadside to forward direction. Experimentally results exhibit that it owns a bandwidth from 10 to 16 GHz (46.2%) with beam scanning range from -36° to 65°. The maximum gain of the prototype is 16 dBi within the whole operating band.