An Electronically Tunable 28-34 GHz 2-D Steerable Leaky Wave Antenna

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel electronically tunable 2-D steerable leaky wave antenna operating at 28-34 GHz, achieving beam steering through integrated variable components with high gain and efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a microstrip leaky wave antenna with integrated tunable components enabling independent 2-D beam steering at mm-wave frequencies.

Findings

Peak realized gain of 8 dBi

Radiation bandwidth of 28-34 GHz

Beam rotation of over 90° and 70° in phi and theta directions

Abstract

In this paper, a 2-D beam steering mm-wave antenna based on the leaky wave configuration is presented. Microstrip leaky wave antennas are known to exhibit beam rotation by changing the frequency. In this work, the microstrip leaky wave antenna is adopted and co-integrated with electronically tunable board components that periodically load the antenna. By independent control of variable capacitors and diodes, single-frequency 2-D beam steering across the bandwidth is achieved. The proposed antenna is fabricated in Rogers printed circuit board technologies and the simulation results exhibit a peak realized gain of 8 dBi, radiation bandwidth of 28-34 GHz, radiation efficiency of more than 80%, and more than 90$^\circ$ and 70$^\circ$ of beam rotation in the $\phi$ and $\theta$ directions.