Bandwidth and gain enhancement of endfire radiating open-ended waveguide using thin surface plasmon structure

This paper proposes a technique to enhance the bandwidth and gain of an endfire radiating open-ended waveguide using a thin slow-wave surface plasmon structure. Mounted in the E-plane of the stated waveguide, a thin corrugated slow-wave structure has been used in conjunction with a waveguide transition to generate an endfire electromagnetic beam. An efficient mode conversion from waveguide transition to the corrugate plate resulted in the improved performance of the design. An impedance bandwidth from 8 GHz to 18 GHz has been achieved along with a gain enhancement from 7 dBi to 14.8 dBi using the proposed hybrid design. Endfire radiations have been obtained with a beam width of less than 25° through the proposed hybrid design with an efficiency of about 96 percent.