A Quad-Polarization Reconfigurable Fixed-Frequency Beam-Scanning Leaky-Wave Antenna Based on the Holographic Method for Millimeter-Wave Application

Abstract

A quad-polarization reconfigurable fixed-frequency beam-scanning leaky-wave antenna (LWA) operating at millimeter-wave Ka-band is presented in this article. A low-loss groove gap waveguide (GGW) structure is employed for low-loss transmission and feeding, above which there locates a metal-covered superstrate. Two rows of inclined slots etched on the metal cover in a staggered arrangement operate as the radiated sources. A modified holographic method is presented, and the hologram can be manipulated by switching the states between “ON” and “OFF” of the p-i-n diodes, and hence the fixed-frequency beam-scanning property with polarization agility of four different polarization states can be realized, including horizontal polarization (HP), vertical polarization (VP), left-handed circular polarization (LHCP), and right-handed circular polarization (RHCP). Besides, measured results of the fabricated antenna are given to verify its performance. The measured peak gains at 30 GHz reach 11.3 dBi in the HP state, 13.0 dBi in the VP state, 11.5 dBic in the LHCP state, and 11.8 dBic in the RHCP state, respectively, with a beam-scanning range of 100° (from −50° to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathrm{50}^{\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), showing good agreement with the simulated results.