A Short‐Open Calibration Method for Enhancing Dispersion Accuracy and Designing Fast Beam‐Scanning and Wide‐Angle Symmetric SIW‐SSPP LWA

In this article, a SIW‐SSPP based bi‐directional LWA has been proposed. The presence of a transition structure between SSPPs lines and traditional lines makes it difficult to precisely extract and analyze the dispersion characteristics of LWAs. A general SOC technique is proposed to accurately calculate the propagation constant of SSPPs LWAs using network theory. The antenna's two symmetric beams enable high‐rate, continuous scanning over a wide angular range using an SSPP slow‐wave mode (−70° to +73° and −110° to +107°, 115°/GHz per beam). Thus, the antenna requires bandwidth (11.75–13 GHz) for given angular range. The slow‐wave effect and bi‐directional radiation are achieved by etching modulated periodic transverse slots on the top surface and H‐shaped slots on the bottom surface of the SIW. The proposed design improves the LWA's scan rate through low group velocity in the slow‐wave region, while the asymmetrical slot layout resolves the OSB issue, as verified by the SIW‐SSPP unit cell's dispersion curve. The proposed LWA has a simple feed network and small volume (0.825 × 4.207 × 0.0209λ3). It exhibits highly accurate dispersion curve, a total efficiency of 90.13%, side lobe level below – 14 dB, and average measured gain of 13.1 dBi with a variance of ± 0.7 dBi.