Experiment on an aperture-coupled leaky-wave antenna with a pencil beam

A frequency-scanning leaky-wave antenna with an aperture-coupled feeding st ructure is presented. The aperture-fed structure is used to excite the micr ostrip first higher mode. In order in suppress the dominant mode, we add a sequence of covered wire in the center of this antenna. The measured H-plan e main beam is a pencil beam, and is continuously scanned 12 degrees as the frequency varies from 9.85 to 10.27 GHz. This feeding structure is very su itable for active phase antenna array applications. (C) 1999 John Wiley & S ons, Inc.