The design of a high-gain and low-profile H -plane horn antenna embedded into a large metallic platform is proposed. The antenna is composed of three parts: coaxial-to-ridged transition, wideband H -plane antenna, and dielectric lens. The coaxial-to-ridged transition makes an efficient conversion from TEM modes in a coaxial probe to the fundamental TE 10 mode in a ridged horn, and by choosing the ratio between horn aperture and length and suppressing the TE higher mode, the optimal design of the H -plane horn antenna can be obtained. Then, a tapered dielectric lens is located in the end-fire direction, which converts the TE wave into the leaky-wave mode, enhancing the peak gain. A prototype of the proposed antenna is finally fabricated and tested. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones, which show that the proposed antenna has a very wide bandwidth from 2.5 to 20 GHz for the voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) < 2.5 and exhibits a low thickness of only 8 mm (0.066λ L , λ L is the free-space wavelength at the lowest operating frequency). Good radiation pattern and high gain can be achieved over a wide frequency band.INDEX TERMS End-fire antenna, horn antenna, tapered dielectric lens, wideband, high gain.

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In this paper, we are introducing an intelligent valet parking management system that guides the cars to autonomously park within a parking lot. The IPLMS for Intelligent Parking Lot Management System, consists of two modules: 1) a model car with a set of micro-controllers and sensors which can scan the environment for suitable parking spot and avoid collision to obstacles, and a Parking Lot Management System (IPLMS) which screens the parking spaces within the parking lot and offers guidelines to the car. The model car has the capability to autonomously maneuver within the parking lot using a fuzzy logic algorithm, and execute parking in the spot determined by the IPLMS, using a parking algorithm. The car receives the instructions from the IPLMS through a wireless communication link. The IPLMS has the flexibility to be adopted by any parking management system, and can potentially save the clients time to look for a parking spot, and/or to stroll from an inaccessible parking space. Moreover, the IPLMS can decrease the financial burden from the parking lot management by offering an easy-to-install system for self-guided valet parking.

In this paper, a metasurfing (MS) concept is demonstrated and applied in the design of the low profile and wideband endfire antenna on metallic surface environments. The MS comprises an array of varying patch printed on homogeneous host medium, and fed by a surface wave launcher (SWL). Each row patch is designed according to the operating wavelength and by altering the surface reactance of the MS the surface-wave mode can be manipulated into the free-space wave mode. Meanwhile, two row of rectangle patches with same size are located on between the surface wave launcher (SWL) and non-uniform MS, which is regarded as an impedance modulation to obtain a good impedance matching. The VSWR of the proposed antenna is below 2.5 from 3.8 GHz to 16.7 GHz in the measured results, which are in good agreement with the simulated results and the thickness of proposed antenna is only 5 mm (0.065λ L , λ L is the free-space wavelength at the lowest operating frequency). Moreover, a stable end-fire beam and low side lobe level (SLL) is obtained in a wide frequency band, and the group delay and the time-domain result also are shown to prove the good wideband transmission. INDEX TERMS End-fire antenna, non-uniform metasurface, low profile, wideband antenna.