A Short Channel Waveguide Stub-Loaded Leaky-Wave Antenna at Ku-Band

This paper presents a flush-mounted, short channel waveguide, stub-loaded, leaky-wave antenna at Ku-band. The antenna is designed with a slot length of 1.33 lambda at the design frequency. The antenna can be synthesized for a given beam tilt by controlling the width of the waveguide and for a given beamwidth by controlling the length and width of the slot. The radiation efficiency and cross-polarization levels of the antenna are 97 % and -48 dB respectively. A thin dielectric of RT5880, with 31 mils thickness is used as the radome. The antenna is fed by an E-plane waveguide to coaxial transition for realization and testing of the antenna. The comparisons of the simulation and measured results, dispersion characteristics of the antenna have been presented. The beam tilt of 30 deg., the gain of 8.1 dBi, the beamwidth of 42 deg. in the longitudinal direction, and 160 deg. in transverse direction have been presented.