Advancing 60 GHz SISO Radar: Additively Manufactured Leaky-Wave Antenna with Enhanced Beam Steering

In this work, a waveguide-based leaky-wave antenna for beam scanning operation at 60 GHz is presented, fabricated, and experimentally investigated. It employs a slotted radiator in a rectangular waveguide, achieves a beam squint of 76° with 5.5 GHz bandwidth, offering enhanced angular resolution. The antenna employs dual feeding, thereby virtually doubling the bandwidth, which permits more beam scan angle per employed physical bandwidth in radar systems for precise angle estimation. The antenna was fabricated using SLA 3D printing and subsequently silver-coated, enabling efficient production of complex 3D antenna geometries. As expected, printing inaccuracies and metallization processes influence the antenna gain and beam squint. However, these effects can not only be reduced but even fully eliminated through targeted optimization of the manufacturing process, as demonstrated in this paper. By combining application-specific antenna design with optimized fabrication techniques, best-in-class performance can be achieved despite the constraints of additive manufacturing. Compared to previous works, the antenna presented herein offers a unique combination of a large squint angle, high operating frequency, and practical manufacturability. By combining beam squint with dual feeding, a balance between high range resolution and precise angle estimation is achieved in radar applications.