Conformal phased arrays can be found in many applications due to their ability to fit tridimensional surfaces and, thanks to their scanning performance, can excel planar arrays. However, most of the previously proposed analysis methods can be applied only to canonical cases and do not consider the effects of polarization. Therefore, this paper presents a closedform formulation for analyzing antenna arrays conformal to arbitrary surfaces, evaluating the effects of the polarization components on the overall radiation performance. Besides, an on-body array conformal to the human torso surface is analyzed as a case study, and its beam scanning performance is evaluated with the developed in-house code. Finally, an amplitude tapering methodology is proposed to switch off shadowed elements and redistribute the power to the operational ones. After applying this tapering strategy, the results show that the maximum directivity is maintained, and a significant reduction in the side lobe levels is achieved.

A Leaky Wave Antenna (LWA) design with high scanning rate (the ratio of beam scanning range and bandwidth) is proposed in this work. The antenna is based on a periodic meandering microstrip line operating in K-Band with continuous beam scanning from backward-to-forward direction in the elevation plane. The height of the transverse lines is varied periodically in the unit cell to increase the electrical length. Hence, the antenna operates in higher spatial order which increases the scanning rate. The final antenna shows a scanning range in the elevation plane from −40°to 45°in the frequency range from 20.6 GHz to 24.6 GHz corresponding to a scanning rate of 21.25 °GHz −1 . The antenna performance is compared with conventional meandering leaky wave antenna design to demonstrate notable increase in the scanning rate with very less impact on gain while also maintaining low profile.

This paper proposes a dual-band frequency scanning meandering microstrip leaky-wave antenna with linear polarization in the Ku-band and circular polarization in the Kband. This is achieved by making use of two spatial harmonics for radiation. The unit cell of the periodic microstrip antenna contains three meanders with mitred corners. To ensure circular polarization, a theoretical formulation is developed taking into account the delay caused by microstrip length intervals. It defines the unit cell geometry by determining the length of the meanders to ensure that axial ratio remains below 3 dB throughout the operational band. Moreover, the meanders are used to provide better control over scanning rate (the ratio of change of angle of maximum radiation with frequency) and reduce spurious radiation of harmonics by ensuring single harmonic operation within the operational band. To guarantee continuous scanning through broadside direction, open stopband is suppressed using mitered angles. The antenna is designed on a 0.254-mm substrate making it suitable for conformal applications. The fabricated antenna shows a backward to forward beam steering range of 72°(-42°to 30°) in the K-band (19.4-27.5 GHz) with circular polarization and of 75°(-15°to 60°) in the Ku-band (11-15.5 GHz) with linear polarization.