An Electronically Steerable Leaky-Wave Antenna Based on Microstrip Line

This paper presents an electronically reconfigurable leaky wave antenna (LWA) with fixed-frequency beam steering capability. The proposed LWA contains a microstrip line as the guiding structure and forty radiating elements. Each radiating element is inserted with a pair of PIN diodes, and the radiation fields can be switched between two discrete states by adjusting the bias voltages of the PIN diodes. Under the two operation states, the amplitudes of the radiation field remain identical, while their phases differ by 180°. Based on the 1-bit phase control elements, we can electronically steer the beam direction at a fixed frequency by manipulating the period length of the LWA.