Reduced Surface Wave Microstrip Antennas

Reduced surface wave (RSW) microstrip antennas are a class of microstrip antennas that excite much less surface wave fields than do conventional microstrip antennas. Furthermore, they have a greatly reduced amount of lateral (horizontal) radiation that propagates outward from the antenna along the ground plane. This results in less edge diffraction from the edges of the ground plane or supporting structure, which in turn results in smoother front-side patterns and less back radiation. The RSW antennas also exhibit less mutual coupling when the antennas are widely spaced, due to the reduced surface wave field and lateral radiation. This chapter reviews RSW antenna design and the different methods for realizing such antennas, and illustrates their main performance features.