Planar Reconfigurable Plasma Leaky-Wave Antenna with Electronic Beam-Scanning for MIMO Applications

A planar leaky-wave antenna (LWA) based on the reconfigurable conductivity of the plasma is designed for MIMO applications with electronic beam scanning capability. 112-semi-elliptical ionized plasma gratings are encased by plexiglass grating filled with a noble gas. These gratings are printed on a metal-backed dielectric substrate with total dimensions of L x W-s x h = 241 x 262.5 x 2.67 mm(3). A coplanar fed printed Yagi-Uda like dipole antenna is integrated with the LWA to launch the required excitation waves. The radiated beam direction, gain, and the side lobe level are adjusted by controlling the periodicity of ionized/non-ionized plasma gratings. The antenna is compact in construction and has a high gain. A fan-shaped beam is obtained from the LWA semi-elliptical arrays with different aspect ratios. The effect of ON/OFF plasma periodicity configurations on the radiation characteristics at fixed frequency is investigated. At 10.1 GHz, the beam is electronically scanned from - 28 to 34 degrees using different periodicities with high gain of 20 dBi and radiation efficiency of 74%. The mutual coupling between two LWA elements is investigated and is reduced to -35 dB. Four LWA elements are arranged in MIMO structure for a high data rate application. The envelope correlation coefficient of 0.0002 and diversity gain of 9.9998 dB are achieved.