Slotted composite right/left-handed strip lines for leaky wave antenna applications

Slotted composite right/left-handed (CRLH) strip lines (SLs) are proposed for leaky wave antenna (LWA) applications in which their radiation patterns are required to be controlled with beam steering function. The dependence of the leakage power from a slot on one of the ground planes of the CRLH SL is studied numerically for a balanced slotted CRLH SL and a possibility of achieving the optimum slot dimensions for wave-number-independent radiation is shown. A slotted CRLH LWA operating at 10.0 GHz with the Taylor radiation pattern with the backward radiation is demonstrated and the validity of the numerical data is confirmed.