Generation of Propagating Bessel Beams Using Leaky-Wave Modes

The generation of Bessel beams using a leaky radial waveguide is presented. The radial waveguide consists of a capacitive sheet over a ground plane. It supports an azimuthally invariant leaky-wave mode whose normal electric-field component is a truncated, zeroth-order Bessel function. The annular spectrum and nondiffractive extent of the Bessel beam is clearly linked to the complex wavenumber of the leaky-wave mode. The fields inside the radial waveguide are derived using classical vector potential techniques. A vector approach is employed to avoid paraxial approximations of earlier works and the associated limitations on shaping the Bessel beam. Design rules are provided to synthesize a desired propagating Bessel beam. A simple coaxial feed is proposed for the radial waveguide and its input impedance is derived analytically. The analytical results are also validated numerically. The proposed structure and design procedure can be used for generating arbitrary zeroth-order propagating Bessel beams at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies.