High Gain Optical Leaky Wave Antenna by Photonic Bandgap Reflector

Abstract

This paper presents high directive waffle waveguide of optical leaky wave antenna (OLWA) excited by photonic bandgap (PBG) reflector. For optical wireless communication, high antenna gain is required due to its high propagation loss. The waffle waveguide structure can realize high antenna gain and the reflector using PBG can excite wide-width OLWA efficiently. Our proposed structure obtains over 45 dBi directional gain in simulation and measurement results, which show good agreement. To our best knowledge, this the first demonstration of the WWG excited by parabolic reflector using PBG.