Slotted Microstrip Leaky-wave Antennas for Backfire to Endfire Beam Steering

Two periodic microstrip leaky-wave antennas providing beam scanning ability from backfire to endfire are presented in this paper. The proposed antennas consist of periodic patterned slots on the ground plane of the microstrip line. Both rectangular and sinusoidal slotted configurations are demonstrated, enabling the backward-to-forward radiation leakage as the operation frequency increases. Experimental results show that the peak gain of antennas exceed 12 dBi and the beam scanning range is 145° and 151°, respectively over a frequency range of 4.0-11.5 GHz and 4.7-7.7 GHz.