Millimeter-Wave Substrate Integrated Waveguide Long Slot Leaky-Wave Antennas and Two-Dimensional Multibeam Applications

Two types of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) long slot leaky-wave antennas with controllable sidelobe level are proposed and demonstrated in this paper. The first prototype is able to achieve an excellent sidelobe level of -27.7 dB by properly meandering a long slot etched on the broadside of a straight SIW section from the centerline toward the sidewall then back. But it is known that an asymmetrically curved slot would worsen the cross-polar level. To overcome this drawback, a modified leaky-wave antenna is proposed, which has a straight long slot etched on the broadside of a meandering SIW section. It yields an outstanding sidelobe level of -29.3 dB and also improves the cross-polar level by more than 11 dB at 35 GHz. Experimental results agree well with simulations, thus validating our design. Then, a two-dimensional (2-D) multibeam antenna is developed by combining such 14 leaky-wave antennas with an SIW beamforming network (BFN). It has features of scanning both in elevation orientation by varying frequency and in cross-plane direction by using the BFN. Excited at ports 1-10 of such a 2-D multibeam antenna at 35 GHz, angular region of 86.6° in azimuth can effectively be covered by 3 dB beam-width of ten pencil beams. Varying frequency from 33 GHz to 37 GHz, the angular region of 37.5° and 38.9° in elevation can be covered by 3 dB beam-width of those continuous scanning beams excited at ports 6 and 8 respectively.