Rectangular backfire antenna with dielectric surface-wave structure

A rectangular backfire antenna with a dielectric surface-wave structure is studied experimentally and theoretically. It consists basically of two plane rectangular reflectors and a dielectric structure as a rectangular-waveguide prolongation. The antenna construction is compared with those of ordinary dielectric and horn antennas, which are more than twice the length of the backfire antenna. Simple expressions for the far-field radiation pattern are derived in terms of the near-field amplitude distribution.