Effect of Interdigital Capacitor on CRLH Leaky Wave Antenna Based on J-Shaped Metamaterial

TL;DR

This paper introduces a miniaturized, reconfigurable CRLH leaky wave antenna using J-shaped metamaterials and interdigital capacitors, enabling tunable beam scanning and circular polarization with improved axial ratio.

Contribution

It presents a novel design integrating interdigital capacitors into J-shaped metamaterial-based CRLH LWAs, allowing reconfigurable beam steering and polarization control.

Findings

The antenna can scan from -55° to +65° in the azimuth plane.

The two-finger IDC configuration achieves circular polarization.

Axial ratio is below 3dB in the main beam direction.

Abstract

This paper aims to present a miniaturized novel reconfigurable composite right/left-handed leaky wave antenna (CRLH LWA) based on metamaterial as well as slow wave structure. In other words, the effect of interdigital capacitor (IDC) on LWA with periodic J-shaped metamaterial is investigated. This microstrip antenna is designed by cascading J-shaped metallic and IDC unit cells. Then it is simulated by full-wave ADS Momentum software. Advantageously, the proposed structure has tunable dispersion diagram that can be tuned by the number of IDC fingers. As will be clarified, altering the number of IDC fingers is able to adapt the equivalent capacitor of the antenna equivalent circuit. Thanks to the availability of RF switches technologies, changing the configuration of the IDCs can be practical. Furthermore, scanning the space from backward to forward region through broadside is one of the distinguishing features of the antenna. Indeed, the CRLH LWA continuously scans the space through broadside from -55 degree to +65 degree in {\phi} = 0 degree plane. The results of the investigation reveal that the LWA with two fingers, as more effective configuration, is a circularly polarized CRLH LWA and it is one of the highly desirable advantages of this structure. The axial ratio in the direction of the main beam for the backward region is lower than 3dB and it is improved in comparison to other regions. The deployment of IDC with variable figures in LWA with J-shaped metamaterial not only brings about the aforementioned significant features but also plays a pioneering role in this paper.