Investigation of metamaterial leaky wave antenna based on complementary split ring resonators

This paper aims at designing an RF tag planar antenna around 2.4 GHz enabling a frequency beam steering in the plane of the substrate. The structure is based on a leaky-wave antenna topology using a transmission line with series (capacitive) gaps and CSRRs periodically loading a host microstrip line. Its behaviour is first assessed by the array factor approach using simulated S-parameters that are validated by measurements. Full-wave simulations of radiation pattern with IE3D software show that radiation occurs mainly in the plane of the substrate and is tunable with frequency.