A composite right/left-handed (CRLH) leaky-wave antenna (LWA) can effectively scan the radiation beam from backward-to-forward direction. However, in most cases, a large range of frequency sweep is required to achieve a wide-angle beam scan, which could limit their applications. An in-depth study is conducted on an equivalent circuit model for a CRLH LWA unit cell to find the controlling parameters on the frequency sweeping range. A systematic design guideline is given for a CRLH LWA for a wide-angle beam scan in a flexibly chosen frequency range. It is shown that beam scanning by sweeping frequency in a target range can be achieved by systematically designing the unit cell parameters. To verify our approach, a novel CRLH unit cell is developed and used to design an LWA for a wide-angle beam scan in a narrow frequency range. Finally, the concept is validated through realization of the antenna and its measurement. The measured results show that the antenna prototype can scan its beam from −56° to +51° when frequency sweeps from 5.1 to 6.11 GHz (i.e., 18.02% of fractional bandwidth).

中文翻译：

---

用于具有灵活选择频率范围的广角波束扫描的复合右手/左手漏波天线

复合右手/左手（CRLH）漏波天线（LWA）可以有效地从后向前扫描辐射波束。然而，在大多数情况下，需要大范围的频率扫描才能实现广角光束扫描，这可能会限制它们的应用。对CRLH LWA晶胞的等效电路模型进行了深入研究，以寻找频率扫描范围的控制参数。为在灵活选择的频率范围内进行广角波束扫描的 CRLH LWA 提供了系统设计指南。结果表明，通过系统地设计晶胞参数可以实现在目标范围内通过扫频进行光束扫描。为了验证我们的方法，开发了一种新型 CRLH 单元，并用于设计用于在窄频率范围内进行广角光束扫描的 LWA。最后，该概念通过天线的实现及其测量得到验证。测量结果表明，当频率从 5.1 到 6.11 GHz（即部分带宽的 18.02%）扫描时，天线原型可以从 -56° 到 +51° 扫描其波束。