Synthesis procedure for thinned leaky-wave phased array antennas

In this work we propose a synthesis method to design thinned leaky-wave-based phased arrays. The radiators are apertures on a ground plane in a superstrate configuration. A leaky-wave mode is excited by the radiating apertures between the ground plane and the superstrate. A convex ℓ₁ optimization procedure is used to reduce the number of elements of the array, while keeping the radiation pattern within a predefined mask. The mutual coupling among the elements in the superstrate configuration is taken into account during the optimization procedure. The final results provide array structures with a reduced number of elements and an enhanced aperture efficiency with respect to the configuration without superstrate.