Liquid Crystal Reconfigurable Leaky-Wave Antenna with Huygens' Metasurface and Gap Waveguide

This work presents a reconfigurable leaky-wave antenna based on an Omega-bianisotropic Huygens' metasurface as leaky surface and gap waveguide as guiding structure. The latter is filled by a nematic liquid crystal, which is a tunable dielectric whose particles can be polarized through an external bias voltage. The gap waveguide technology allows for a non-electrical contact feature, which facilitates the connection of the required external bias voltage. The beam radiation angle can be controlled at a fixed frequency by adjusting the relative permittivity of the LC, so that electronical beam steering can be achieved. A design at 20 GHz of a leaky-wave antenna with beam scanning capabilities in the range of approximately [−10°, 10°] with the Merck GT7-29001 LC is accomplished and successfully tested through full-wave simulations.