Overlapped subarrays of leaky-wave antennas for a reflector-based SAR instrument

The design of a leaky-wave antenna array in the L-band is presented. The array has been developed to feed a large reflector that is part of a SAR system for Earth observation. The basic element of the array is a differentially fed patch antenna that excites the leaky modes in a resonant cavity that is defined by a metasurface. The performance of a 3x3 sub-array has been studied and is presented in this paper, as well as the individual element. Important aspects of the design that affect the overall performance of the array are discussed together with the measured results of the fabricated prototype.