Extended hemispherical lens fed by wideband arrays of connected leaky-wave slots

We propose an array of connected leaky-wave slots as feed of an extended hemispherical dielectric lens, for broadband imaging applications. Simulations of the entire structure, including array and lens, are performed by combining a spectral Green´s function approach and an accelerated physical optics method. The antenna characteristics are investigated over a 4:1 bandwidth parametrically varying the feed off-axis distance (x/R, y/R) and the lens extension length (L). Measurements from prototype demonstrator are also presented to validate the method of analysis.