Gain Enhancement of Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Fed Tapered Slot Antenna Arrays
Yiming Zhang, Peng Zhang, Zhi Ning Chen, Sailing HeABSTRACT
A spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPP)‐based field‐matching feeding method is presented to enhance the gain of tapered slot antenna arrays (TSAAs). By enhancing electromagnetic energy transfer at SSPP hotspots and enhancing field confinement for a uniform electric field distribution over TSA apertures, the radiation efficiency relative to accepted power is increased and directivity is improved. The study demonstrates a 2.82‐dB gain enhancement for a single TSA at 30 GHz compared with a conventional microstrip‐to‐slotline feeding structure. Furthermore, a 12‐element linear leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) using the proposed SSPP‐fed TSA unit cells realises a maximum measured gain of 15.4 dBi and an average measured gain of 13.3 dBi across the operating bands. The LWA's single‐beam scanning continuously covers a range from −72° to +75° (17–31.2 GHz) under the n = −1 space harmonic and from −14° to +48° (33–38 GHz) under the n = −2 space harmonic.