Reconfigurable Plasma 2D Circles Leaky Wave Antenna

Abstract

This paper introduces electronic beam scanning 2D leaky-wave antenna (LWA) based on reconfigurable conductivity of the plasma. The antenna consists of a fixed number (112) of Plexiglass semi-elliptical grating filled with a noble gas printed on a grounded dielectric substrate. A coplanar fed Yagi-like dipole printed antenna is integrated with the LWA to launch a cylindrical exciting wave. By controlling the periodicity of ionized/non-ionized plasma gratings, the radiated beam direction, gain and side lobe level (SLL) can be controlled. The antenna has a compact structure of 241 × 262.5 × 2.67 mm3. The effect of curvature of semi-elliptical grating on the LWA operation is investigated. A fan-shaped beam is obtained from semi-elliptical grating LWA with different aspect-ratio. The semi-circular grating introduces a pencil beam with 23 dBi and bandwidth (BW) of 1.52 GHz. The effect of ON/OFF plasma periodicity and codes is investigated. At fixed frequency, the beam is electronically scanned from −28° to 34° with a gain of 23 dBi for different periodicity. For fixed periodicity, P=8, the beam is scanned from 8° to 23° with high gain of 20.3 dBi. Using the proposed semi-circular grating LWA, the beam direction is controlled without changing the physical structure of the antenna.