A liquid crystal leaky-wave antenna with fixed-frequency beam scanning and open-stop-band suppression

ABSTRACT

In this article, a liquid crystal (LC) leaky-wave antenna (LWA) is presented with fixed-frequency beam-scanning property operating in millimetre-wave band. Two rows of periodic-perturbation stubs (PPSs) structure are employed on both sides of a microstrip line to generate radiation. The undesirable open stop-band (OSB) that deteriorates the broadside radiation of the LWA can be avoided, and a satisfactory broadside radiation is realised, by introducing a specific offset between the two rows of the PPSs, which is different from the existing methods and is fully studied in this paper. Furthermore, since LC material with tunable dielectric constant is loaded on the antenna substrate, the phase constant of the LWA can be manipulated by applying a controllable biasing voltage from 0 V to 20 V. Therefore, fixed-frequency beam scanning can be realised. The presented LWA is fabricated and measured, and the antenna performances have been verified by the measured results.

KEYWORDS:

• Liquid crystal
• leaky-wave antenna (LWA)
• periodic-perturbation stubs (PPSs)
• open-stop band (OSB)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author’s contributions

Shanzhe Wang, Zheng Li, Xiaoxi Chen, and Meie Chen contributed equally to this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62171019 and Grant 62031004.