An Overview of Design Techniques for Two-Dimensional Leaky-Wave Antennas

Two-dimensional leaky-wave antennas offer effective, compact, single-feeder, easy-to-fabricate solutions to the longstanding problem of realizing a simultaneously directive and low-profile radiating device. These traveling-wave antennas have been thus proposed as wideband, reconfigurable, or frequency-scanning radiating structures in different application contexts, spacing from the microwave to terahertz frequency range. These diverse contexts call for a comprehensive guide to characterizing and designing two-dimensional leaky-wave antennas. In this work, a review of numerical techniques for the analysis of either quasi-uniform or radially periodic leaky-wave antennas is proposed in order to provide the reader with straightforward yet effective design guidelines. Theoretical results are corroborated through full-wave simulations of realistic three-dimensional models of the considered devices, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed methods.