A novel leaky-wave retrodirective reflector using short/matched terminations

A novel leaky-wave retrodirective reflector using short and matched terminations is presented. The principle of this reflector consists of terminating a backfire-to-endfire leaky-wave antenna by a short load at one end and by and matched load at the other end. In this manner, the incident field excites the antenna, is reflected by the short, and is reradiated toward the source, while it is absorbed by the matched load at the other end, avoiding a spurious beam the "wrong" side of the normal to the antenna. While using a conventional antenna would lead a reflector working only in a 90 degrees space, using the recently developed backfire-to-endfire leaky wave antenna allows 180 degrees reflector operation.