Applications of spoof planar plasmonic waveguide to frequency-scanning circularly polarized patch array

Spoof planar plasmonic waveguides (SPPWs) show potential applications in many microwave and terahertz systems, e.g. imaging, communication and sensing, due to their capability of highly confining spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and relatively low propagation loss. Meanwhile, efficient electromagnetic emission from the SPPWs is one of the dominant factors in the practical applications. In this article, we demonstrate a beam-scanning circularly polarized (CP) antenna based on the SPPW of blind-hole array, which can efficiently convert spoof SPPs propagating in the SPPW into free-space emissions. Several centre-inclined rectangular patches are adopted to achieve the CP emission. The antenna array was designed and fabricated in the microwave frequency band, and the measured results validate the good emission performance of the proposed array, e.g. high gain and wide-scan angle. Finally, the proposed idea can be further extended into the terahertz frequency band.