Small-Scale Beam Scanning with an Ultrathin High Impedance Surface-Based Leaky Wave Antenna with Multiple Feeds

An ultrathin antenna of thickness nearly 100th of the wavelength is presented, which is capable of providing small-scale beam steering. The antenna is inspired by concepts used in high impedance surfaces (HISs) A linear array antenna comprised of periodic dogbone-shaped elements mounted on top of a grounded substrate with multiple feeds is analyzed to obtain beam scanning and large gain bandwidth, despite the ultrathin thickness. Beam steering is observed when one port at the time is excited among multiple ports distributed along the length of the array. When multiple ports are excited simultaneously, a significantly larger gain bandwidth is observed even from this ultra-low-profile configuration. A maximum gain of 5.7 dBi is achieved along with a 3 dB gain bandwidth over a wide frequency range from 19.2 GHz to 25.2 GHz (27%).