Antennas with digitally steerable beams for modern wireless communication systems

This paper presents digital beam steering of microstrip leaky-wave antennas (MLWAs). An array of binary switches are integrated into the MLWA. Each binary switch can be turned On and Off independently. The beam direction is changed by varying the digital code applied to control the switch array. Two different digitally controlled antennas are described to steer the main beam at a fixed frequency.