Generating and 2-D Steering Large Depth-of-Field Beam by Leaky-Wave Antenna Array With a Modified Parabolic Reflector

Abstract

A millimeter-wave substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna with the ability of generating 2-D steerable large depth-of-field beam is presented in this article. First, a transverse antenna topology feeding with the series- and the parallel-network is employed to generate the limited-diffractive beam with large depth of field to overcome the problem that the conventional radial generator cannot steer its beam electronically. The proposed antenna is achieved by combining a modulated leaky-wave slot array antenna with a modified multibeam SIW parabolic reflector. The modulated leaky-wave slot array with stepped-width is designed to able to steer the limited-diffractive beam in the horizontal dimension with the frequency, which validates the frequency scanning feasibility of the limited-diffractive beam. Then a modified SIW parabolic reflector with matching loads is used to feed the modulated leaky-wave SIW slot array antenna to generate multiple limited-diffractive beams in the vertical dimension. A large depth of field of about 43λ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</sub> is achieved of the central limited-diffractive beam. The measurements are in good agreement with the simulated results.