Microstrip Leaky Wave Antenna Performance on a Curved Surface

Microstrip antennas are popular due to their ease of construction and minimal dimensions, especially in terms of thickness. These antennas typically are resonant structures and hence having a relatively small operational bandwidth. An alternative microstrip structure that maintains the advantage of a thin structure at the expense of a larger lateral dimension is a terminated microstrip line. While the fundamental microstrip mode does not radiate well, the first higher-order mode does. Such antennas are generally referred to as leaky wave antennas. One issue with using these antennas is that the driving point impedance is dispersive. Hence, fixed port impedance terminations limit the operational bandwidth of the antenna. In addition, the fraction of supplied power delivered to the terminating port is not radiated. Hence the efficiency of the antenna is not optimal. In this paper, the effect of curvature on radiation properties of a leaky wave antenna is investigated through computational modeling and experiment