Continuous Scanning Leaky-wave Antenna Based on Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons

A continuous scanning leaky-wave antenna (LWA) is proposed using a patch array fed by planar spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPP). The LWA is capable of scanning its beam from backward to the forward direction. The −10 dB reflection coefficient bandwidth of the antenna is 6.5 to 10GHz. It is shown that the scanning angle can reach 55 degrees with an average gain level of 9.5 dBi.