Leaky-Wave Antenna Analysis using Multi-Modal Network Theory with Open Periodic Boundaries

TL;DR

This paper presents two hybrid methods within multi-modal network theory for analyzing periodic leaky-wave antennas, effectively capturing dispersion and reception characteristics with fewer modes and validated against full-wave simulations.

Contribution

The paper introduces novel hybrid analytical and simulation methods for LWA analysis within MNT with open boundaries, improving efficiency and accuracy over existing techniques.

Findings

Efficient dispersion diagram computation with fewer modes.

Validation against full-wave simulations confirms accuracy.

Analysis of reception response reveals differences from time-reversed eigenvalue problems.

Abstract

This paper introduces two methods for analyzing periodic leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) within a new framework denoted as multi-modal network theory (MNT) with open periodic boundaries (OPBs). The approach is hybrid, combining analytical techniques with a commercial full-wave solver. The first method computes the dispersion diagram of periodic LWAs. It is iterative and relies on the full-wave simulation of a single unit-cell of a LWA, coupled with the analytical solution of an eigenvalue problem. This method effectively captures both the phase and attenuation constants of periodic LWAs while using fewer modes than previous methods with commercial frequency-domain solvers. The method is validated by computing the dispersion of classic LWA unit-cells and comparing them to those obtained through full-wave simulations of the full-length antenna and other state-of-the-art methods. The second, also based on OPB-MNT, focuses on LWA analysis in reception. Specifically, it determines the response of a unit-cell to an incident plane wave. To validate this method, we compute the response of LWA with different unit-cell designs. By comparing these results with the corresponding dispersion analysis, we show that the receiving case and the eigenvalue problem are related but not simply time-reversed versions of each other.