Multi-beam leaky-wave antenna fed by a multi-layer integrated symmetric parabolic reflector

Printed planar leaky-wave antennas are really promising solutions for high-performance, low-cost, small-size, multi-beam antennas for millimeter-wave applications thanks to their efficiency, compactness, easy design, and compatibility with low-cost fabrication processes, as Printed Circuit Board (PCB) technology. Pencil-beam scanning leaky-wave antennas normally require cumbersome feeding networks with expensive and lossy phase shifters for their operation. Therefore, this approach does not complete exploit and make use of the potentiality in terms of efficiency and cost of leaky wave antennas. In the present work, a pencil-beam printed leaky-wave antenna (an array of slots etched on the uppermost plate of a multi-layer parallel plate waveguide (PPW)-like structure) is fed by a new kind of quasi-optical integrated system.