Dispersion Relation Extraction of Periodic Leaky-Wave Antennas using Complex Eigenmodes

The problem of extracting the leakage factor and dispersion relation of a general periodic Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) is addressed using a complex eigenmode approach. The mapping between complex eigenmodes (ß,Ω) and the driven-mode dispersion relation (γ, ω
0
) is used to extract the leakage factor of a radiating periodic LWA, and demonstrated using a slot array antenna as an example. The dispersion relation extracted from the unit cell mapping process shows an excellent agreement with an otherwise computationally intensive full-wave driven-mode simulation.