Steerable Composite Right/Left-Handed Leaky Wave Antenna for Automotive Radar Applications

A novel structure for a frequency-independent steerable composite right/left-handed (CRLH) leaky wave (LW) antenna in the millimeter-wave band is proposed. This has the advantages of wide beam scanning and low profile, and is a suitable structure for mass-production. The proposed antenna has features wherein a movable dielectric slab is placed above the CRLH LW antenna, and the radiation angle can be steered by changing the distance between the slab and the antenna using compact actuators. Moreover, slots are added to the antenna to control the aperture amplitude distribution of the array antenna in order to enhance aperture efficiency. A prototype CRLH LW antenna has been fabricated with these slots, and backward-to-forward beam scanning characteristics at 76 GHz have been demonstrated successfully by measurement. A wide scanning angle from 73 to 114 deg. has been achieved experimentally. The aperture efficiency is 25.3 %