Wide Beam Steering by Leaky Wave Antenna with Liquid Crystal-based Phasing Structure and Metamaterial-based Radiating Apertures in Ku Band

A wide beam steering leaky-wave antenna (LWA) based on a liquid crystal (LC) phasing structure and metamaterial apertures is presented and simulated. The antenna continuously steers its beam from −48° to +44° at the fixed frequency of 13.6 GHz (Ku band) by biasing the embedded LC. As a result, the beam steering angle is 64% wider than the state-of-the-art LC-based LWAs in the Ku band to the best of our knowledge. This improvement is obtained by the design of a meander-line phasing structure as revealed from an analysis based on the array factor. The antenna design also offers compactness, lightweight, low-cost, simple beam steering mechanism, and design with much-reduced bias lines and control circuits, low bias power consumption, good power handling, good realized gain, and low sidelobes.