Compact and Reconfigurable Leaky Wave Antenna Based on a Tunable Substrate Integrated Embedded Metasurface

A leaky wave antenna (LWA) based on a substrate integrated embedded metasurface (SIMS) is proposed and simulated. The SIMS is obtained by blind vias in the middle of a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and filling the gap beneath the blind vias with liquid crystals (LC). Different capacitive impedances are obtained by biasing the LC, which impacts the propagation characteristics of the LWA and thus changes its beam angle. A 30° beam steering at 52.5 GHz is achieved according to simulations of the proposed SIMS-LWA. The unique advantages of this LWA include high realized gain, simple mechanism for beam steering, frequency-fixed reconfiguration, non-complex design with much reduced bias lines and control circuits, low cost, low profile, compactness, and mature of LC technology, to name a few.