Design of dual‐band leaky wave antenna based on microstrip to EH ₀ / EH ₁ ‐mode converter

Abstract

In this work, a microstrip leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) under EH0/EH1‐mode excitations is proposed for dual‐band application. By introducing periodic shorting pins in the microstrip line, the leaky wave regions of EH0 and EH1‐mode are created in two operation bands respectively. According to the electric field distribution of EH0 and EH1‐mode, the equal phase feeding network is constructed to excite EH0‐mode, while the EH1‐mode needs the excitation with opposite phase feeding. To satisfy this special phase requirement in two operation bands, a dual‐mode converter is designed based on a one‐wavelength‐ring balun, which provides two passbands with equal/opposite phase operations. To validate this proposal, a prototype of this dual‐band LWA is designed and fabricated. The measured results exhibit that the proposed antenna could radiate beams under EH0‐mode in 4.2 GHz and EH1‐mode in 6.3 GHz.