A New Class of Scannable Millimeter-Wave Antennas

The complexity usually associated with scanning arrays at millimeter wavelengths produces fabrication difficulties, so that alternative methods are needed that employ simpler structures. This paper describes such an alternative scanning approach, and presents a group of new and simpler radiating structures suitable for millimeter-wave applications. Additional significant advantages are that the radiation has negligible cross polarization, no blind spots and no grating lobes. The theoretical analyses for all of the antenna structures are accurate and yield dispersion relations in closed form for most of them; the array analyses take all mutual coupling effects into account. For two of the antennas, measurements have also been taken that show very good agreement with the theory.