Millimeter-wave left-handed propagation in periodically-loaded waveguide

A millimeter-wave left-handed waveguide is presented in this paper. This left-handed waveguide is formed by periodically loading a Ka-band rectangular waveguide using H-shape metal plates. Like the resonant-slot coupled cavity chain, the length of the coupling slots equals to half wavelength. The periodicity is a small fraction of the wavelength so that the waveguide can be considered as a homogeneous effective medium. Validations of the left-handed propagation are presented by means of full-wave simulation using commercial software Ansoft HFSS. Comparisons between the fundamental left-handed mode and higher order right-handed mode are also given out by using TM and TE excitations respectively.