Accurate Dispersion Extracting and Designing Method for Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Leaky-Wave Antennas Based on Short and Open Calibration

In recent years, the spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) line have attracted much attention and its application in the field of leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) has been widely studied. Nevertheless, due to the existence of transition structure between SSPPs line and the traditional line, calculating and analyzing the dispersion characteristic of LWAs accurately remains a challenge. In this brief, utilizing short and open calibration (SOC) technique and network theory, a general method is proposed to analyze and design SSPPs LWAs. Combined with SOC method, the reference plane is recalibrated to eliminate the error achieved by transition section. On the basis, the propagation constant of arbitrary LWA can be calculated accurately with network theory. An example of quasi-triangular modulated SSPPs LWA is given to demonstrate the correctness of this method. Furthermore, the corresponding relationship between the propagation constants and unit depths is established with the extracting technique. The attenuation and phase constants can achieve independent control, thus designing a low sidelobe SSPPs LWA with tapered amplitude distribution. Compared with the other techniques applied to SSPPs LWAs, the presented method exhibits some extra advantages, including high accuracy, short computation time and wide application range.