Wideband dual‐element leaky‐wave antenna with constant gain and enhanced broadside radiation bandwidth using multilayered composite right/left‐handed substrate integrated waveguide

In this study, a wideband dual‐element leaky‐wave antenna (DE‐LWA) is proposed to achieve constant gain and wideband broadside radiation by using multilayered composite right/left‐handed substrate integrated waveguide. The proposed DE‐LWA consists of two leaky‐wave radiator elements which are with slanted and vertical interdigital fingers slot arrays. To verify the simulated results, the proposed DE‐LWA is fabricated and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones, indicating that the fabricated antenna obtains broadside gain of 12.5 dB with variation of 1.0 dB over the frequency range of 8.725‐9.25 GHz (5.84%). Moreover, the proposed DE‐LWA also can provides a beam scanning property from backward ?80° to forward +80° over the frequency range from 7.4 to 12.7 GHz with a constant gain of more than 10 dB. Besides, the electromagnetic performances of this work are better than those of the recently reported similar work in the references.     

Wideband leaky‐wave antenna with consistent gain and wide beam scanning angle based on multilayered substrate integrated waveguide composite right/left‐handed transmission line

In this article, a wideband leaky‐wave antenna is designed for consistent gain and wide beam scanning angle by using the proposed multilayered substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) composite right/left‐handed transmission line (CRLH TL). The proposed SIW CRLH structure consists of two parts: an interdigital fingers slot of rotating 45° etched on the upper ground of the SIW, and a rotated parasitic patch beneath the slot. Due to the continuous phase constants change from negative to positive values of the proposed SIW‐CRLH under the balanced condition, the designed LWA can achieves a continuous beam‐scanning property from backward to forward over the operating frequency band. The designed antenna is fabricated and measured, the measured and simulated results are in good agreements with each other, indicating that the designed antenna obtains a measured continuous main beam scanning from backward ?78° to forward +76° over the frequency range from 7.7 to 12.8 GHz with a consistent gain of more than 9.5 dB. Besides, the designed antenna also exhibits a measured 3‐dB gain bandwidth of 45.1% with maximum gain of 15 dB. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:731–738, 2016.     

Leaky‐wave antenna with high gain and wide beam‐scanning angle range based on novel SIW‐CRLH transmission line

A leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) with high gain and wide beam‐scanning angle is proposed in this article using a novel substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) composite left/right‐handed transmission line (CRLH TL). The novel SIW‐CRLH TL is analyzed and the equivalent circuit model is also provided. Considering the continuous phase constant of the balanced SIW‐CRLH TL from negative to positive values, the proposed LWA can obtain a continuous beam steering property from backward to broadside to forward. For verification, a periodic LWA, which is comprised of 10 unit cells of the balanced SIW‐CRLH TL, is fabricated and measured. The measured and simulated results agree well, showing that the proposed periodic LWA operates from has continuous beam‐scanning capabilities of about 90° from backward to forward (including the broadside) with gains of better than 10 dB within the operating band. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:36–41, 2016.     

A spoof surface plasmon leaky‐wave antenna with circular polarization

In this article a circularly polarized (CP) leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) based on spoof surface plasmon (SSP) is proposed. Corrugated circular patches are loaded on either side of the SSP waveguide periodically and asymmetrically, which enables continuous CP beam steering from backward to forward quadrant eliminating “the open stopband” at broadside. The antenna exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 43.5% (<?10 dB) and a 3‐dB axial‐ratio bandwidth of 27.8%; within the impedance bandwidth from 4.5 to 7 GHz the radiation beam can be steered from 120° to 70°. With a ground plane placed underneath, the antenna can achieve average radiation gain and efficiency of about 10 dBic and 84.2%, respectively, showing a radiation gain increase of about 3 dB over that without a ground plane. The proposed SSP‐based CP LWA is expected to find applications in wireless communication systems based on planar antennas.     

Dual‐band beam scanning filtering antenna using dual‐eighth mode substrate integrated waveguide‐based metamaterial structure

In this article, a dual‐band beam scanning antenna with filtering capability is proposed by using novel dual‐eighth mode substrate integrated waveguide‐based dual‐band metamaterial (DB‐MTM) structure. The novel DB‐MTM structure consists of two interconnected modified eighth mode substrate integrated waveguide (EMSIW) structures, which is designed by etching four interdigital fingers on the upper ground, and has two balanced composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) passbands. Taking advantage of the continuous phase constant changing from negative to positive values within the two CRLH passbands of the DB‐MTM structure, a beam scanning antenna, which is composed of 11 dB‐MTM unit cells, is designed to achieve continuous beam scanning from backward to forward directions within dual operating frequency bands. For verification, the proposed dual‐band antenna is fabricated and measured. According to the measurements, the fabricated antenna can scan its main beam from ?72° to +57° and ?70° to +38° over the two operating frequency bands of 3.40‐4.95 GHz and 5.85‐6.80 GHz, respectively; and exhibits very sharp transitions at the band edges over the two operating frequency bands. Besides, the measured peak gains in the two operating bands are 14.0 dB at 4.5 GHz and 14.5 dB at 6.4 GHz. Moreover, the measurements show good agreement with the simulations, proving the validity of the design method, and further expanding the applications of EMSIW.     

Millimeter‐wave wideband circularly polarized monopulse antenna using the sequential rotation feeding technique

This article presents the design and implementation of a single‐layer wideband millimeter‐wave circularly polarized (CP) monopulse cavity‐backed antenna based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. The antenna consists of a 2× 8 array of CP cavity‐backed antenna elements, a 90° 3‐dB coupler, power dividers, and phase shifters. In order to enhance the operating bandwidths, the sequential rotation feeding technology is adopted in the design of the monopulse antenna. To validate the proposed concept, a prototype operating at 42 GHz was fabricated and measured. The measured 3‐dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth for the sum beam can cover a frequency range from 37 to 46 GHz. The measured gain for the sum beam at the center frequency of 42 GHz is 17.5 dBiC, while the null‐depth of the difference beam is measured to be ?36.8 dB. The proposed monopulse antenna has advantages of low‐cost, easy‐fabrication, and easy integration with planar circuits.     

Electronically controlled beam steering leaky wave antenna in nematic liquid crystal technology

A novel nematic liquid crystal (LC) technology‐based electronically controlled leaky wave antenna (LWA) with microstrip‐waveguide conversion working mechanism and wide beam steering range is presented in this article. The LWA is a combination of an inverted microstrip structure and rectangular waveguide. According to the characteristics of LC materials in microwave band, a broadband microstrip‐waveguide conversion device is proposed. The gradient slot leaky wave structure is combined with the microstrip‐waveguide conversion device to form an electronically controlled LWA with continuous tunable beam. Simulation and experiment results show that the LWA proposed in this article has a 32° beam scanning range at 12 GHz and good impedance matching and stable gain, suggesting the great potential of nematic LC materials for extensive applications in microwave band in the future.     

Eighth‐mode SIW based compact high gain leaky‐wave antenna

In this article, a novel electrically small eighth‐mode substrate integrated waveguide (EMSIW) based leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) in planar environment is presented. The proposed antenna uses 1/8th mode SIW resonator which helps to improve compactness of the design while maintaining high gain and increased scanning angle. The proposed SIW cavity is excited by a 50 Ω microstrip line feeding to resonate at dominant TE₁₁₀ mode in X‐band. The dimensions of the resonators are adjusted to keep resonant mode at same frequency. The fabricated prototype is approximately 5λ₀ long. Measured results show that the proposed leaky‐wave antenna is able to operate within frequency range of 8‐10 GHz with beam scanning range of 51° and maximum gain of 13.31 dBi.     

High gain substrate integrated waveguide beam scanning antenna with sub‐array elements

A method to enhance the gain of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) beam scanning antenna is proposed in this article. 2 × 2 SIW cavity‐backed sub‐arrays are employed in array design. The antenna is constructed on two layers. The top layer places four SIW cavity‐backed sub‐arrays as radiating elements and the bottom layer is an SIW transmission line to feed the sub‐arrays. Beam scanning feature can be obtained due to the frequency dispersion. Moreover, through separating radiators to the other layer and using 2 × 2 SIW cavity‐backed sub‐arrays as radiating parts, the antenna gain is improved significantly. For a linear array, 4.1 to 6.8 dB gain enhancement is achieved compared to a conventional SIW beam scanning antenna with the same length. Then, the linear array is expanded to form a planar array for further gain improvement. A 64‐element planar beam scanning array is designed, fabricated, and tested. Experimental results show that the proposed planar array has a bandwidth from 18.5 GHz to 21. 5 GHz with beam scanning angle from ?5° to 11.5° and gain in the range of 20.5 to 21.8 dBi. The proposed high gain beam scanning antennas have potential applications in radar detection and imaging.     

A dual band leaky wave antenna based on modified substrate integrated waveguide

In this article, a new leaky wave antenna (LWA) based on modified substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) is introduced. At first, the modified SIW structure is presented and it is shown that it supports propagation of quasi‐TEM with nearly uniform electric field distribution. Then, a new cell based on diagonal‐shaped slots embedded on top surface of the structure is introduced and its dispersion characteristics and its different radiation regions are determined. A LWA made of 15 unit cells is designed and a prototype of the antenna is fabricated. The proposed LWA is simulated using a software package and its radiation characteristics are also measured. It is shown that a good agreement is obtained between simulated and measured results and two frequency bands are obtained. In the frequency range of 7 GHz to 8.25 GHz, it radiates in forward region with maximum gain of 11.3 dB and scan angles from 54° to end‐fire. In addition, it radiates in backward region from ?70° to broadside from 14 GHz up to 20 GHz with maximum gain of 16.47 dB. High gain, compactness, and wide scan angles are the advantages of the proposed LWA.     

Broadband printed quadrifilar helix antenna using parasitic strip technique

A circularly polarized (CP) printed quadrifilar helix antenna (QHA) with enhanced bandwidth is proposed in this communication. This QHA is fed by a feeding structure with superior performance, which uses wide‐band 90° and 180° planar bulun. The feeding network can simply realize the 90° phase shift and four equal power divisions within a wide band range. Enhanced impedance matching and CP radiation characteristics can be achieved with the parasitic strips between helix arms. The study of proposed antenna performance with different geometric parameters has been conducted. The final antenna exhibits a good impedance bandwidth (IBW) of approximately 37.4% (1.65‐2.41 GHz), and the 3‐dB axial‐ratio bandwidth (ARBW) is over 43.9% (1.6‐2.5 GHz). Broad pattern coverage, pure CP radiation at all designed bands and a wide 3 dB axial‐ratio beam width of 150° makes this antenna an excellent candidate for satellite communications and navigation systems.     

Wide‐angle scanning circular polarization phased array based on polarization rotation technology

A wide‐beam circular polarization (CP) antenna and a wide‐angle scanning phased array based on novel polarization rotation reflective surface (PRRS) are proposed. The CP wide‐beam pattern is obtained by the combination of the radiation wave from the patch antenna and the orthogonal reflected wave from the PRRS with a 90° phase difference. The proposed CP wide‐beam antenna obtains the patterns with the 3‐dB beamwidth more than 136° and the axial ratio (AR) beamwidth more than 132° in the xoz‐plane. Furthermore, an eight‐element phased array based on the wide‐beam CP antenna element is also developed. The measured results show that the main beam of the array can scan from ?65° to 65° with a gain fluctuation less than 3 dB and the ARs at every scanning angle less than 3 dB.     

Spoof surface plasmon polariton‐fed circularly polarized leaky‐wave antenna with suppressed side‐lobe levels

A wide‐angle scanning circularly polarized (CP) leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) with suppressed side‐lobe levels (SLLs) is proposed, which can be a good candidate for future radar and wireless communication systems. The LWA consists of 12 cross slotted elliptical patch elements, which are fed by a microstrip spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) line. Two fundamental modes of the patch array with two orthogonal polarizations can be excited by the electromagnetic coupling between the array and the SSPP line. By optimizing the elliptical eccentricity e and etching cross slots on the elliptical patch array, a 90° phase difference is introduced, and then, the CP radiation is realized. A tapered aperture field distribution is also realized by adjusting coupling intensities between the patch elements and the SSPP line, which is beneficial to reduce the SLLs. The electrical size of the LWA is 1.29λ₀ × 6.02λ₀ × 0.08λ₀, where λ₀ is air wavelength at 12.9 GHz (broadside direction). Both the simulated and measured results indicate that the CP operating band is 12.0 to 15.0 GHz. The proposed CP LWA scans continuously from ?14° to 38°. In the whole operating band, the axial ratios are less than 3 dB, and the SLLs are less than ?20 dB as well.     

Continuous scanning leaky‐wave antenna utilizing second‐mode spoof surface plasmon polaritons excitation

Continuous scanning leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) based on second‐mode spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) excitation has been proposed and validated in this article. Different from the existing modulation methods, connecting axisymmetric rectangular modulation is adopted to excite the ?first harmonic. In this way, the slow‐wave bound on the surface of the transmission line is converted into a radiation wave in space. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first presentation of LWA design utilizing second‐mode SSPPs excitation. In the range from 5.0 to 9.0 GHz, the proposed LWA realizes continuous scanning from ?54° ~ 11° with a quasi‐omnidirectional beam in the vertical plane. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured, and the measured results show good agreement with the simulated. The proposed LWA has potential applications in communication systems and radars.     

Reconfigurable frequency and steerable beam of monopole antenna based on graphene pads

This article presents a reconfigurable frequency and steerable beam monopole antenna based on tunable graphene pads operating in both 4G and 5G bands. The proposed antenna consists of printed CPW‐fed circular monopole shapes, with five rectangular strips added with a separation angle of 45°. These strips are connected to monopole by using graphene pads. The monopole antenna operates in the lower 5G band from 3 up to 7.8 GHz at ?6 dB reflection coefficient. The antenna has an omni‐radiation pattern over the operating band without any applied bias voltage to the graphene pads. By applying the DC bias voltage, the rectangular strips are connected to the monopole and the designed antenna start to resonate from 1.8 to 8 GHz adding the 4G band frequencies. The steering of the proposed antenna beam started from ?60° to 60° according to the bias of the connected graphene pads. The graphene pad exhibits a variable resistance realizing an almost short to an open circuit with and without voltage bias, respectively. The designed antenna is simulated using high frequency structure simulation (HFSS) Ansys ver. 19 and equivalent circuit model of the graphene. The antenna is fabricated using reduced graphene oxide (RGO) pads. Reflection coefficient and radiation pattern measurements as well as simulations are presented with a positive agreement between the results.     

Two-dimensional broadband and wide angle scanning multi-beam antenna based on leaky-wave metasurface

In this article, a novel two-dimensional multi-beam antenna with a broad band and a wide angle scanning range is proposed. It is composed a leaky-wave metasurface (MTS) and a four-port feeding network with high isolation. The leaky-wave MTS formed by T-shaped slots is displayed as radiator and divided into four angular sectors, each one devoted to the formation of a beam in a given elevation plane. At every fixed frequency, the antenna can radiate multi beam in azimuth plane through exciting different ports. Also, multi-beam radiation with a broad band and a wide angle scanning range in the elevation plane is realized when fixed port is excited at different frequency. The antenna with overall size of 207 mm by 207 mm by 2.0 mm is fabricated on FR-4 substrate. The measured and simulated results show that the ?10 dB relative bandwidth is 30% (from 9.44 to 12.77 GHz). When different ports are excited at the same frequency, the azimuth of radiation beam is steered to 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°. In addition, the beam-scanning range of the prototyped antenna is from 29° to 75° when the frequency sweeps in the range of 9.5–12.0 GHz. Also, the maximum radiation efficiency reaches to 31.1% and the measured peak gain within the scanning range is 12.29 dBi.     

Low‐profile omnidirectional circularly polarized antenna based on substrate integrated waveguide technology

A substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) circularly polarized (CP) antenna with omnidirectional radiation in the azimuthal plane is proposed. The antenna consists of five identical end‐fire CP antenna elements in a pentagonal array configuration, which is loaded on a circular substrate. Each element contains an H‐plane horn antenna in SIW structure and a printed dipole antenna. Five parasitic curve elements are introduced to improve the omnidirectional property of the antenna. Combined with complementary dipoles theory and SIW technology, prototype antenna is designed, fabricated and measured. With a low profile of 0.024λ₀, the antenna has a 10‐dB return‐loss impedance bandwidth of 4.08% (2.4～2.5 GHz) and a 3‐dB axial‐ratio (AR) bandwidth of 5.76% (2.36～2.50 GHz). The antenna works well in the 2.45 GHz ISM band, with good cross‐polarization and excellent omnidirectional property.     

Design of a compact wideband CP metasurface antenna

In this article, a new compact metasurface circularly polarized (CP) antenna is presented, where the rotating 45° periodic ellipse patch is used to achieve polarization conversion from linearly polarized to CP. The meta‐surface is composed of 4 × 4 ellipse patches with 45° rotation, which are etched on the top layer of upper substrate. A slot ground plane and a coplanar waveguide structure are printed on both sides of bottom substrate, and the bottom substrate is directly connected to the upper substrate, which can make the antenna profile lower. As demonstrated in this article, the presented antennas have good characteristics of excellent 3‐dB axial ratio bandwidth of 17.4% (5.25‐6.25 GHz), and wide 10‐dB impedance bandwidth of 20.6% (5.0‐6.15 GHz).     

A novel substrate integrated waveguide cavity‐backed self‐diplexing antenna array with frequency beam scanning characteristic

This article presented a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity‐backed self‐diplexing antenna array with frequency beam scanning characteristic. The proposed array consists of 16 SIW cavity‐backed slot antennas. The SIW cavity‐backed slot antenna can be fed by two separate ports to resonate at two different frequencies and achieve high isolation better than 20 dB between two input ports. The proposed element is a typical self‐diplexing antenna. These cavity‐backed slot antennas are shunt‐fed by a compact 1 to 16 SIW power divider and series‐fed by a set of microstrip lines, respectively. As a result, this array achieves an unidirectional radiation pattern at 10.2 GHz with high gain of 15.10 dBi, and a frequency beam scanning characteristic from 7.0 to 9.0 GHz ranging from ?50° to 46°.     

Microstrip tapered traveling wave antenna for wide range of beam scanning in X‐ and Ku‐bands

In this work, a broadband traveling wave antenna (TWA) is presented as a microstrip design that is capable of a wide range of beam scanning by changing the operation frequency within 8 to 14 GHz. For this purpose, a rhombus shaped microstrip patch is used as a unit element and TWA is built as a tapered microstrip line consisting of the cascaded rhombus shaped unit elements and terminated by a rectangular antenna instead of traditional resistive termination which can be called patch loaded traveling wave antenna (PLTWA). Optimization and simulation of the PLTWA is carried out using 3‐D Microwave simulation software CST and its dimensions are resulted as 130 × 30 mm. From the simulations, it should be noted that the patch termination increases the maximum gain almost 3 dB and the total efficiency up to 90% compared to the traditional resistive load over the operation band at the expanse of a small distortion on S₁₁ characteristics. Then the PLTWA is fabricated and measured along its operation band 8 to 14 GHz and it exhibits a peak gain of 9.5 dBi at 11 GHz. The measured gain of the proposed antenna is found between 9 dB and 12 dB and its beam direction is steerable with the range of 80° (?65°‐15°) over the operation band 8 to 14°GHz.