Leaky-Wave Thinned Phased Array in PCB Technology for Telecommunication Applications

We present a practical implementation of a leaky-wave thinned phased array in printed circuit board (PCB) technology. In this paper, we demonstrate that a reduction of the grating lobes, and therefore an improved gain in a thinned phased array, with respect to standard solutions, is achieved by virtue of the angular filtering introduced by a leaky-wave cavity in the far field. The presented array is designed in PCB and integrated with an inductive partial reflective surface. A full study of the performances of the 7×7 phased array antenna for several scanning angles and frequencies is presented. This paper shows an improved gain, directivity, grating lobe level, back lobe level, beam efficiency, and active reflection coefficient with respect to a reference solution based on 2 × 2 subarrays. The results are validated via the measurements of a 3 × 3 array prototype.