Liquid-Crystal-Tuned Resonant Series Patch Array With Unique Element Spacing Emulating Simplified Operating Construe of Traveling-Wave Antenna

This letter presents a liquid crystal (LC) tuned resonant series patch array that interpretively emulates simplified unidirectional traveling-wave operation by eliminating the dependency on the undesirably tuned reflection coefficient. The general term for the resonantly excited current of a series-fed topology involving the reflection coefficient is derived. Additionally, a newly defined array factor is introduced, incorporating LC-tuned reconfigurability of constituent unit elements. Furthermore, a unique element spacing that has been rebuffed in broadside arrays due to out-of-phase radiation is selected for improved scanning performance despite a confined phase-tuning range and simplified noniterative analysis. Moreover, the impedance matching procedure that successfully maintains the input matched condition against variations in the LC dielectric constant is established by modifying the slotted coupling topology. It is demonstrated that a significantly enhanced gain of 12.1 dBi and aperture efficiency of 30.1% are achieved at 28.5 GHz compared to previously studied counterparts for which measured results are unavailable, and huge loss is inevitably accompanied by topological limitations.