A bandwidth-enhanced planar endfire antenna based on surface waves

ABSTRACT

A surface-wave-based endfire antenna with an enhanced impedance bandwidth is presented in this paper. The antenna consists of a surface-wave guide (SWG) and five strips printed on the SWG. The endfire radiation benefits from the surface-wave diffraction of the SWG which is investigated with the Snell's law, effective surface impedance and eigenvalue analysis. A prototype is fabricated and measured, and the measured results indicate that the antenna has two resonances and its bandwidth is enhanced up to 16.1% (4.0–4.73 GHz). The proposed endfire antenna also exhibits high gain, good gain flatness, low cross-polarization level and low profile.

KEYWORDS:

• Band enhancement
• eigenvalue analysis
• endfire antenna
• surface waves

ORCID

You-Feng Cheng http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2527-6615

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 61471105].

Notes on contributors

You-Feng Cheng

You-Feng Cheng was born in Anhui, China, in 1989. He received the BE degree in electronic information science and technology from the Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, China, in 2012. He is currently pursuing the PhD degree in radio physics with the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China. In 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. His current research interests include phased arrays, evolutionary algorithms, and reconfigurable antennas.

Xiao Ding

Xiao Ding received the PhD degree in radio physics from UESTC in 2014. In 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, USA. He joined the UESTC in 2014. From 2016 to 2017, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Applied Electromagnetics Laboratory, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. He is currently an Associate Professor with UESTC. His current research interests include antenna theory and computational electromagnetics.

Fu-Long Jin

Fu-Long Jin was born in Gansu, China, in 1992. He received the BE degree in electronic information science and technology from UESTC in 2016, where he is pursing his PhD degree. His research interests include phased arrays and reconfigurable antennas.

Wei Shao

Wei Shao was born in Chengdu, China, in 1975. He received the BE degree in electrical engineering and the MSc and PhD degrees in radio physics from UESTC in 1998, 2004, and 2006, respectively. He joined UESTC in 2007, where he is currently a Professor. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA. From 2012 to 2013, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong. His current research interests include computational electromagnetics and antenna design.