A novel full‐wave CAD for the design of tapered leaky‐wave antennas in hybrid waveguide printed‐circuit technology

This work presents a novel computer‐aided design (CAD) tool for the design of tapered leaky‐wave antennas (LWAs) in hybrid waveguide printed‐circuit technology. The software package is composed of several tools, which are connected together to provide a semi‐automated step‐by‐step design procedure. The design procedure is presented and the different tools are described, together with the involved theory, leading to the design of tapered LWAs. A practical taper design is performed, and comparisons with simulations using commercial software (HFSS) are presented for validation purposes. Due to the full‐wave nature of the technique used in the analysis engine, excellent agreement is shown between the proposed 2D‐based approach, and 3D HFSS results. Also, the analysis procedure is fast, thus leading to semi‐automated designs that are not affordable with common 3D optimization techniques. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.