496 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

12, 2013

Efficient Analysis and Design of Novel SIW

Leaky-Wave Antenna
Alejandro Javier Martinez-Ros, Student Member, IEEE, José Luis Gómez-Tornero, Member, IEEE, and
Fernando Quesada-Pereira, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A novel transverse equivalent network is developed

in this letter to efficiently analyze a recently proposed leaky-wave
antenna in substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. For
this purpose, precise modeling of the SIW posts for any distance
between vias is essential to obtain accurate results. A detailed
parametric study is performed resulting in leaky-mode dispersion
curves as a function of the main geometrical dimensions of the
antenna. Finally, design curves that directly provide the requested
dimensions to synthesize the desired scanning response and
leakage rate are reported and validated with experiments.
Index Terms—Leaky-wave antennas (LWAs), planar antennas,
substrate integrated waveguide (SIW), transverse equivalent
network (TEN).

I. INTRODUCTION

L EAKY-WAVE antennas (LWAs) can be efficiently de-

signed by obtaining the complex propagation constant
of the radiating leaky mode as a function of
Fig. 1. (a) Scheme of novel SIW LWA. (b) Associated TEN.
frequency and the main geometrical parameters of the an-
tenna [1]. Recently, a novel planar LWA in substrate integrated
waveguide (SIW) technology was proposed [see Fig. 1(a)], important design constraints regarding coupling and cross-po-
showing the interesting feature of simultaneous control over larizations effects. Finally, Section IV shows design curves used
the leaky-mode phase and leakage rate by only modifying to obtain the desired frequency scanning response, and which
the SIW width and the distance between posts [2]. Pre- are validated with experimental prototypes. The proposed TEN
vious printed-circuit LWAs, such as the microstrip [3] or the provides a much more efficient design technique than the one
half-width microstrip [4] LWAs, did not provide this flexible used in [2], which was based on full-wave simulations of the
control over the leaky mode, thus suffering from limitations in complete 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) model of the
the tailoring of the radiation pattern. In this letter, the novelty antenna.
resides in the precise modeling of the posts’ equivalent T-net-
II. EFFICIENT LEAKY-MODE ANALYSIS OF A SIW LWA
work for any distance between vias both for the row of posts
acting as perfect electric conductor (PEC) as the one acting as The scheme of the proposed TEN is shown in Fig. 1(b). Two
partially reflecting surface (PRS) [see Fig. 1(a)]. This T-net- sections of transmission lines of lengths and model the
work is incorporated to a transverse equivalent network (TEN) SIW width and the radiating strip width, respectively. This strip
[see Fig. 1(b)], as will be illustrated in Section II. In Section III, is terminated on its right side by an equivalent impedance
a parametric study to provide a detailed physical insight on that characterizes the radiating discontinuity due to the trunca-
the influence of the main dimensions of the antenna will be tion of the upper plate in a dielectric-filled parallel-plate wave-
shown. Particularly, the effects of the radiating strip width guide [5]. Connecting the SIW and the radiating strip sections,
and substrate thickness are studied for the first time, showing the T-network composed by one parallel inductor and two se-
ries capacitors (with respective reactances and ) models
the row of metallic cylinders of diameter separated at a dis-
Manuscript received November 09, 2012; revised February 14, 2013; ac-
tance , as it was proposed by Marcuvitz [6, pp. 285–289].
cepted March 27, 2013. Date of publication April 03, 2013; date of current ver- Similar equivalent T impedance network is used at the left side
sion April 16, 2013. This work was supported by the Ministerio de Educación of the SIW to model the row of metallic posts with period ,
y Ciencia Español the Spanish Regional Seneca Project, Ref. TEC2010-21520- which is connected to the characteristic impedance of the
C04-04, and the Spanish Regional Seneca Project 08833/PI/08.
The authors are with the Department of Communication and Infor- parallel-plate dielectric substrate. The analytical expressions for
mation Technologies, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Cartagena and proposed by Marcuvitz in [6] are limited by the
30202, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; small-obstacle approximation to very sparse posts .
[email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
On the contrary, the effective width models extensively used in
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. the design of nonradiative SIW circuits are only valid for close
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2013.2256769 vias [7] and do not allow to obtain complex leaky

1536-1225/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE

MARTINEZ-ROS et al.: EFFICIENT ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF NOVEL SIW LWA 497

and and using the transverse wavenumber and the char-

acteristic impedance of a -polarized wave
(4)

where can be related to the longitudinal wavenumber

by the following expression, where is the free-space
wavenumber and the substrate permittivity [see Fig. 2(a)]:
Fig. 2. (a) Scheme of plane-wave incidence on a row of periodic metallic
posts. (b) Equivalent T-circuit model proposed by Marcuvitz [6]. (5)

Finally, the transverse resonance equation (TRE) can be ex-

modes. Therefore, there is a lack of a TEN that allows to ac- pressed at the reference plane shown in Fig. 1(b) as
curately obtain the dispersion of complex leaky modes in SIW
(6)
technology for any ratio . This is of key importance for the
efficient design of the novel SIW LWA whose study in [2] relied which must be solved for the unknown leaky-mode complex
on full-wave analysis of the complete 3-D CAD model using longitudinal wavenumber
commercial software such as HFSS.
(7)
A. Accurate Modeling of Partially Reflective Inductive Posts
It must be noticed that the internal angle of incidence is
To overcome the restrictions of Marcuvitz’s model, the re-
related to the leaky-wave phase-constant [see Fig. 2(a)] by
actances and are extracted from an accurate full-wave
analysis of the reflection coefficient of a periodic row of (8)
metallic posts under plane-wave incidence, as illustrated in
Fig. 2. This analysis is based on an efficient electric field integral
Therefore, the problem of finding the leaky-mode solution is
equation (EFIE) technique, which uses the Green’s function of
equivalent to the minimization of (6) in the complex plane
a periodic distribution of electric current filaments accelerated
[1]. As an example, Fig. 3 shows the leaky-mode normal-
with Kummers’ method [8]. The reflection coefficient is then
ized phase and attenuation constants ( and ) for three
computed for the incidence angle [see Fig. 2(a)] and the
different values of , as frequency is varied from 12 to 18 GHz.
rest of the geometrical parameters ( , , and ). Hence, the as-
The rest of the geometrical parameters of the studied LWA are
sociated complex impedance can be then derived from
kept fixed, and they are summarized in the inset of Fig. 3(b). Re-
sults obtained from the proposed TEN are compared to HFSS
and to modal results using Marcuvitz’s analytical impedance.
(1) As expected, the degree of inaccuracy of Marcuvitz’s results is
higher for lower values of [see Fig. 3(a)] due to the aforemen-
After some algebraic manipulations, the following equations re- tioned small-obstacle restrictions. On the other hand, some dis-
late the normalized reactances and with and , crepancies between results computed by the proposed TEN and
thus expressing their dependence with and : HFSS are present in Fig. 3(b) due to the assumption of uniform
plane-wave incidence in the calculation of (1)–(3); which is
made more significant close to the cutoff regime . Nev-
ertheless, Fig. 3 shows that the proposed TEN provides good
results for all values of .

III. PARAMETRIC DISPERSION CURVES

(2)
In order to characterize the behavior of the proposed SIW
LWA as its main geometrical parameters are varied, several dis-
persion curves at a fixed design frequency (15 GHz) will be ob-
tained. In each section, it will be shown the effect of a parameter
in the leaky-mode normalized leakage rate and its associ-
ated radiation angle given by [1]
(3)
(9)
B. Development of an Accurate TEN
Once the numerical procedure to compute and has A. Effect of Distance Between Reflective Posts and SIW
been presented as in Section II-A, its corresponding values can Width
be obtained for any incidence angle and any period and For a fixed design frequency of 15 GHz, Fig. 4 illustrates the
can be introduced in the TEN shown in Fig. 1(b). On the other effect of the distance between the PRS posts’ distance and
hand, the equivalent impedances of the transmission lines sec- different SIW widths . As expected, when is increased, the
tions can be readily expressed from their respective lengths PRS wall becomes more transparent, thus increasing the leakage
498 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

Fig. 5. Dispersion curves as a function of radiating strip width for SIW

leaky mode and higher-order channel-guide leaky modes.

Fig. 3. (a) Normalized phase constant. (b) Normalized leakage rate as a func-
tion of frequency and different values of .

Fig. 6. Effect of the substrate thickness over the SIW leaky mode for different
values of .

radiating discontinuity occurring at its edge [see Fig. 1(a)]. As

is increased, higher-order channel leaky modes [9] will start
appearing. Particularly, this happens when , and it
is repeated every , as can be observed from the coupling
between modes (when the SIW leaky mode crosses with the
Fig. 4. (a) Pointing angle of the main beam. (b) Normalized leakage rate as a channel modes [9]) in Fig. 5. To avoid this undesired coupling,
function of the separation between posts and for different widths . it is convenient to use narrow strips . However,
there is a tradeoff since narrower strips create stronger coupling
between the PRS and the radiating end [9] that results in higher
rate [see Fig. 4(b)]. However, it is also observed how for periods cross-polarization (XP) levels due to the interaction of evanes-
larger than 5.5 mm, the leakage rate starts to decrease as a re- cent fields, which are not accounted for the TEN and reduce
sult of the tendency toward endfire radiation , its accuracy. An optimum value of mm is chosen
which ultimately vanishes the leakage when entering the sur- to minimize undesired coupling effect while assuring minimum
face-wave regime for mm. On the other hand, modi- XP discrimination (XPD) level.
fies the cutoff frequency of the SIW leaky mode, thus provoking
an increase in the scanning angle for wider strips, as shown C. Effect of Substrate Thickness
in Fig. 4(a). In any case, good agreement is observed between The dependence of the leaky mode with the substrate thick-
HFSS and the proposed model for all studied values of and ness is shown in Fig. 6. As it is observed, the pointing
. angle remains almost constant with for each value of
. On the other hand, thicker substrates allow to obtain a higher
B. Effect of Radiating Strip Width range of variation in the leakage rate, as it usually happens
The strip section of width acts as a transition from the with printed antennas [3]. Although this is something wanted,
fields coming through the SIW PRS wall and which reach the the use of thicker substrates increases the level of XP of the
MARTINEZ-ROS et al.: EFFICIENT ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF NOVEL SIW LWA 499

Fig. 7. Dependence of the polarization discrimination level with .

Fig. 9. Measured and simulated frequency scanning responses for the three an-
tennas designed in [2] to radiate at , 30 , and 10 at the frequency
of 15 GHz.

designed dimensions match the ones that were obtained in [2]

with 3-D full-wave iterative optimization (trial and error) using
HFSS. Clearly, the computational cost needed for the modal dis-
persion synthesis technique proposed in this work is much lower
than the design approach of [2]. Finally, Fig. 9 illustrates the fre-
quency scanning responses for the three LWAs designed in [2]
to scan at 10 , 30 , and 50 at 15 GHz. Good agreement is ob-
Fig. 8. Two-dimensional dispersion chart for SIW LWA, including in circles served between the scanning predicted from the TEN and mea-
the dimensions of the five manufactured antennas in [2].
sured results.

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