Meandered and Dispersion-Enhanced Planar Leaky-Wave Antenna With Fast Beam Scanning

Controlling the scan rate of frequency-scanned antennas can be useful for any bandwidth-limited application. Two techniques to control the scan rate of planar periodic leaky-wave antennas are discussed: optimizing unit cell dispersion and meandering unit cells with a desired periodicity. Each technique presents a tradeoff of limited matching bandwidth or reduced antenna gain, respectively. These techniques are used together to design a broadside-scanning Ka -band antenna. Measurements demonstrate a very high scan rate of 10.5^{\circ }/\%\text{BW}. The 8\% available bandwidth and 80^{\circ } scan range through broadside is very favorable for frequency-scanned applications.