Leaky-Wave Antenna with Switchable Omnidirectional Conical Radiation via Polarization Handedness

Reconfigurable antennas capable of beam-steering offer an efficient solution to optimize the use of the crowded wireless medium and can serve as a multifunction antenna. Beam-steering is often achieved by antenna geometry switching at the expense of hardware complexity. Herein, polarization is used to realize beam-steering without the need for antenna geometry modification. Depending on the handedness of the feed, backward or forward conical radiation is demonstrated in an approximately 13 λ₀ long short-circuited helically slotted waveguide antenna. Tapering the slit width with a Taylor distribution reduces the measured sidelobe levels by 3 dB in average and results in a realized gain of 10-13 dB and 11-13 dB for right-handed (backward radiation) and left-handed circularly polarized (forward radiation) feeding, respectively, in the bandwidth from 8.5 to 9.5 GHz.