Active dual-beam aperture-coupled leaky-wave antenna

Abstract

An active aperture-coupled leaky-wave antenna (LWA) with excellent dual-beam scanning capability is presented. An X-band varactor-tuned HEMT VCO is integrated on the other plane through an aperture with the LWA. This antenna has the advantages of multi-functionability, interference shielding, and a scanning main beam. The measured main beam in the elevation plane can be continuously scanned for 20" for each beam as the HEMT VCO frequency is vaned from 8.97 to 9.5GHz. An effective isotropic radiation power of 18.89dBm for the right beam and 19.06dBm for the left beam is achieved. Introduction. Recently, leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) have become popular, and there is a growing interest in the use of various types of leaky-wave antennas as frequency-scanning elements [ 1, 21. Leaky-wave antennas possess the advantages of a low profile, fabrication simplicity, ease of matching, a narrow beamwidth and frequency-scanning capability. The aperture-fed structure was