A Broadband High-Gain Leaf-Like End-Fire Array Antenna

A broadband high-gain leaf-like end-fire array antenna is proposed in this paper. The proposed antenna consists of a long microstrip line with two ports and 2 × 16 periodical radiating elements. The microstrip line is suspended in vacuum and fed by port1. One end of the radiating element is short-circuited to the ground through a rectangular short patch, and the other end is connected to the microstrip line through a horizontal leaf-like patch. The horizontal leaf-like patch is utilized to improve the impedance matching and enhance radiation of the short patch. The proposed antenna is a leaky-wave antenna which usually have the characteristics of high gain and low profile. Using vacuum as substrate improves the bandwidth and end-fire performance of antenna. The simulated -10 dB impedance bandwidth is 32% @5.3 GHz (4.4GHz- 6.1 GHz) and gain is 14.9 dBi at 5.3 GHz, 3-dB gain bandwidth is 32% @5.3 GHz (4.1 GHz- 5.8 GHz). Eventually, the simulation results verify that the proposed design has the characteristics of broadband and high gain.