Dual-Polarized Reconfigurable Metasurface for Leaky-Wave Antenna Design Using Air-Bridged Schottky Diode Technology

A novel dynamically reconfigurable leaky wave antenna capable of performing beamsteering based on a tunable metasurface that supports dual polarization and uses air-bridged Schottky diodes is presented. The electromagnetic waves produced by ideal dipoles in this case, propagate within a cavity which is formed by a Partially Reflective Surface (PRS) and a tuneable High-Impedance Surface (HIS). The beamsteering capability of the produced highly-directive beam is enabled by the air-bridged Schottky diodes embedded in the centre of each HIS unit cell by altering the capacitance of the diodes. This design operates at 37.5 GHz with a continuous beam scanning of 22° while the novel proposed HIS unit cell enables the support of dual-polarized excitation. The proposed leaky wave antenna design was simulated using CST Microwave Studio and the final array is characterized by acceptable losses of 1–5.4dB for this frequency band, a bandwidth of 2GHz while the directivity varies within 20.72–22.8 dBi.