A Robust Horn Ridge Gap Waveguide Launcher for Metal Strip Grating Leaky Wave Antenna

An H-polarized leaky wave antenna (LWA) employing metal strip grating (MSG) is presented. A novel feeding system based on the ridge gap waveguide (RGW) technology feeds the proposed antenna. The proposed feeding mechanism is made up of a profiled Quasi-TEM horn ridge gap waveguide, which is designed to have the same aperture width and provide uniform field excitation to the leaky wave antenna. The design is performed to provide proper matching between the launcher and the MSG to improve the antenna radiation efficiency. The proposed antenna is operating at 28.5 GHz with a scanning angle capability of -20
^°
achieving a realized gain of 24 dBi. Several numerical results using point-matching and aperture distribution method are used to analyze the proposed LWA. Moreover, measurement results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the novel feeding system functioning as the LWA launcher.