Electrically controlled leaky wave antenna with wide-angle scanning based on liquid crystal

In this paper, a design method of electrically controlled leaky wave antenna based on liquid crystal is proposed and investigated. The leaky wave antenna is composed of a rectangular waveguide and an inverted PCB micro-strip structure with eight short slots. By loading bias voltage to the liquid crystal, the leaky wave antenna implements wide beam scanning on fixed frequencies. Simulation results indicate that a 36° beam scanning range is realized in Ku band.