Bespoke lens design for a high gain circularly polarized leaky wave antenna

Radiating elements within leaky-wave antennas (LWA) undergo amplitude reduction and phase change and hence, have beam-scanning characteristics. Such antennas, when used as a feed for dielectric lenses, tend to have poor performance. This article describes a bespoke lens design for an LWA operating at 16–18 GHz that takes individual radiating elements into consideration and achieve a gain increment of approx. 7.5 dB across the operating bandwidth while maintaining circular polarization.