Continuously Beam-Scanning Leaky-Wave Antenna Based on Impedance-Matched Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons
Jia‐Yuan Yin, Xinyue Cao, Jing‐Ya Deng
Abstract
A leaky-wave antenna (LWA) based on impedance-matched spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) is proposed in this letter. Periodic perturbations in the form of impedance stepping SSPPs is introduced to break the stable transmission condition of SSPPs, resulting in the energy radiation and the angle of the main radiation beam changes from backward to forward quadrant as the frequency changes. Open-stop band existing in normal periodic LWA is suppressed by properly designing the matched structure between the impedance stepping SSPPs. A prototype of the proposed LWA is simulated, fabricated, and measured. The measured results are in reasonable agreement with the simulated results. Simulated and measured results indicate that the proposed LWA operates with a continuous beam-scanning range in each upper and lower half-space, as well as an average gain level of 9.86 dBi. The proposed antenna can be easily integrated and is promising in planar wireless communication systems.