3486 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO.

7, JULY 2013

Holographic Surface Leaky-Wave

Lenses With Circularly-Polarized Focused
Near-Fields—Part II: Experiments and Description
of Frequency Steering of Focal Length
Darwin Blanco, José Luis Gómez-Tornero, Member, IEEE, Eva Rajo-Iglesias, Senior Member, IEEE, and
Nuria Llombart, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper reports experimental results which near-field zone. In these cases, the array feeding network is re-
demonstrate the possibility to synthesize focused near-fields from sponsible to excite each element of the array with the requested
a planar printed circuit which is fed with a simple coaxial probe. quadratic-phase and amplitude illumination to synthesize the
A prototype operating at 10 GHz has been manufactured and
tested. As predicted by the theory described in the first part of this desired focusing pattern. Similarly, an externally-fed printed
paper, high 75% focusing efficiency of circularly polarized fields reflectarray has been recently proposed to focus in the near-field
is obtained as a result of the proper modulation of the dimensions [12]. In any case, printed-circuit array configurations [7]–[12]
of the Archimedean-shaped printed slot. The designed coaxial offer lightweight, compact, low-profile, cheap solutions when
feeding provides good matching (below ) in the entire compared to bulky three-dimensional shaped bodies used for
frequency band. Finally, the scanning of the focal length as a
function of the frequency is described in this paper, showing mea- dielectric and metallic microwave lenses.
sured results and accurate theoretical explanation based on the One step forward in the design of electrically-large printed-
frequency dispersion of the tapered leaky mode. This phenomenon circuit near-field microwave lenses is the elimination of the
is general for this type of two dimensional leaky-wave lenses, and complicated feeding network associated to phased arrays with
might find many applications in imaging, sensing and heating. multiple radiating elements [7]–[11], and keeping an integrated
Index Terms—Electromagnetic focusing, holographic antennas, feeding mechanism (in opposition to reflectarrays which are ex-
leaky waves, microwave lens, printed circuits, surface waves. ternally fed [12]). In this sense, leaky-wave antennas (LWAs)
offer an integrated and simple mechanism to illuminate large ra-
diating areas by exciting a leaky mode [13]. Ohtera was the first
I. INTRODUCTION
one to propose the use of a curved one-dimensional (1D) LWAs
to obtain focused near-fields [14], and Burghignoli et al. theoret-

M ICROWAVE lenses were first proposed in 1960’s to

focus the electromagnetic energy in the near-field
(Fresnel) region [1], and their properties were studied in detail
ically demonstrated in [15] that a leaky wave propagating along
a 1D rectilinear structure can be properly modulated (tapered)
to focus the radiated fields, avoiding the complicated bending
in the 1980’s [2]–[4]. The first designs were based on dielectric
of the radiator. The first practical designs of rectilinear modu-
lenses and metallic reflectors, which are externally illuminated
lated 1D leaky-wave lenses (LWL) were presented in [16] using
by a space plane-wave which is focused at the desired focal
a dielectric waveguide loaded with a tapered slot. In [17], a par-
point due to the three-dimensional shape of the focusing body
allel-plate waveguide loaded with an inductive sheet formed by
(normally parabolic or hyperbolic geometries) by virtue of
microstrip lines was controlled with FETs in order to electroni-
Geometric Optics [5]. Phased arrays of horns [3], [6], patches
cally steer the focal region.
[7]–[10], and printed dipole antennas [11], have also been
Nevertheless, all the aforementioned LWL designs [14]–[17]
proposed in order to focus the electromagnetic fields in the
are limited to one-dimensional leaky lines, which are able to
focus only in their longitudinal plane, thus providing 2D fo-
Manuscript received June 18, 2012; revised September 18, 2012; accepted cusing patterns which are sharp in the longitudinal plane and
March 16, 2013. Date of publication April 12, 2013; date of current version
July 01, 2013. This work has been supported in part by Spanish National project wide in the transverse direction. However, three-dimensional
TEC2010-21520-C04-04 and AYA2010-10054-E, European FEDER funding, focusing patterns are requested in most practical applications
and in part by the program “Ramon y Cajal” RYC-2009-04924. for medicine [6], industry [7], and imaging/sensing [8]–[12].
D. Blanco and E. Rajo-Iglesias are with the Department of Communications
and Signal Theory, Carlos III University, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain (e-mail: Recently, cylindrical leaky waves have been proposed to gen-
eva@tsc.uc3m.es). erate 3D focused Bessel beams [19], [20]. However, those re-
J. L. Gómez-Tornero is with the Department of Communication and Infor- sults did not make use of tapered leaky modes because the em-
mation Technologies, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Cartagena 30202,
Spain (e-mail: josel.gomez@upct.es). phasis was not on near-field focusing efficiency. In the first part
N. Llombart is with the Optics Department, Universidad Complutense de of this paper [18], we presented the design of a two-dimen-
Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain (nuria.llombart@opt.ucm.es). sional leaky lens which provides the interesting features of ef-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. ficient three-dimensional focusing, printed-circuit technology,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2257645 low-profile, and integrated simple feeding. The lens is based on

0018-926X/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE

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BLANCO et al.: HOLOGRAPHIC SURFACE LEAKY-WAVE LENSES 3487

Fig. 2. Feeding coaxial probe, illustrating the main dimensions.

Fig. 1. Photograph of fabricated holographic leaky-wave lens (LWL) in

printed-slot technology.

an Archimedean-spiral-shaped double-slot printed on a double

grounded substrate, which resembles an annular slot antenna
[21] with two continuous slots placed at a distance of
from each other to minimize multiple reflections.
This paper reports experiments performed on a fabricated
prototype, and it is distributed as follows. Section II describes Fig. 3. Comparison between simulated and experimental input matching of the
the feeding circuit and presents measured focusing pattern at fabricated holographic leaky-wave lens.
the design frequency of 10 GHz. Section III is devoted to de-
scribe the important ability of this type of device to steer the
focal distance as frequency is shifted. This phenomenon is in-
herent to any LWL [16], and this paper demonstrates that a sim-
ilar phenomenon occurs for 3D focusing patterns. Moreover, an
accurate frequency dispersion theory allows to efficiently pre-
dict this interesting result which might have potential applica-
tion in imaging, sensing and heating.

II. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AT THE DESIGN FREQUENCY

Fig. 1 shows a picture of the fabricated prototype. The mod-
ulated dimensions (position and width ) of the printed
slots were designed in the first part of this paper [18]. Rogers
Duroid 5880 substrate with thickness , , Fig. 4. Scheme of the near-field measurement set-up.
and , and with a total size of 20 cm 20 cm
( at 10 GHz) has been used.
simulations and measurements in Fig. 3. The discrepancies are
A. Design of Integrated Coaxial Feeding due to tolerances and errors in the adjustment of the aforemen-
A key feature of the novel planar lens is that it affords a simple tioned probe depth .
single-source integrated in the supporting substrate, in oppo-
sition to more complicated feeding networks used in phased- B. Measured Near Fields
array printed lenses [7]–[11], or external spherical-wave feeders A near-field measurement set-up has been prepared using
needed in reflectarrays [12]. The scheme of the vertical coaxial foam substrate to support a field probe as shown in Fig. 4. The
feeding, depicted in the inset of Fig. 2 together with its main orientation of this probe is varied to measure the different com-
dimensions, is typical of radial-line slot antennas (RLSA) [22], ponents of the electric field along the main axes of the lens. Sev-
[23], commonly used to create low-cost large directive antennas. eral probe dimensions have been studied in order to minimize
This circuit is located at the lens center, and a SMA connector its impact on the measured field. It has been found out that the
at the bottom ground plane provides the interface to RF ca- most critical parameter is the length of the probe which has to be
bles as shown in the pictures of Fig. 2. The probe penetration minimized. The optimized probe length is 6 mm and the coaxial
has been tuned to optimize the input matching, obtaining diameter 5 mm, both small in terms of the wavelength. Even so,
in 9 GHz–11 GHz bandwidth as shown by CST a small perturbation of the antenna near-field is expected. The

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3488 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 7, JULY 2013

For lower frequencies the gain at broadside drops as a conse-

quence of the cutoff regime of the leaky wave, while for higher
frequencies the pencil beam transforms into a conical beam [24],
[25]. In this paper we study for the first time the behavior with
frequency for a focused 2D leaky aperture, showing that the
focal length can be steered up to a limit as the frequency of
the signal is shifted. Theoretical results based on the dispersion
of the modulated cylindrical leaky-wave accurately predict the
performance of the holographic lens with frequency, which is
validated with experiments.

A. Frequency Response of Focused Cylindrical Leaky Wave

In [18], it was demonstrated that a single modulated leaky
wave can be used to represent the field radiated by the holo-
graphic lens antenna. Therefore, by studying the variation of
the cylindrical leaky-wave complex wavenumber along the lens
radial distance versus frequency, we can characterize the fre-
quency steering of the focal length. The designed modulated di-
mensions of the printed-slot dimensions , are used
as fixed parameters in a modal solver [28], which provides the
phase and attenuation terms of the leaky wave as a function of
frequency, and for each radial position of the slot unit-cell

(1)
Fig. 5. Comparison between simulated and measured near-field focusing pat-
terns of the fabricated holographic leaky-wave lens at 10 GHz a) Axial cut along Particularly, the modulated leakage angle , has a strong
-axis ( ) b) Transverse cut along -axis ( ). dependence with the modulated distance between slots
and with frequency, which can be expressed as

scanning range is around in both axial and trans- (2)

verse planes. The scanning step, 5 mm, is chosen to be similar
to the probe length.
The term in (2) (where is the speed of light in
Fig. 5 compares the measured and simulated - and - near-
vacuum) describes a variation in the resulting scanning angle
fields at the design frequency of 10 GHz. The axial cut is repre-
from backward-endfire to broadside as frequency is increased,
sented in Fig. 5(a), showing that the measured focal depth and
as it customarily happens in frequency-scanning antennas [24].
position of the focus perfectly match the theoretical results, and
This can be seen in Fig. 6, where the dispersion of the modulated
that both components are well balanced. The transverse cut in
cylindrical leaky wave as a function of the radial distance of the
the -axis ( ) at the focal height ( )
designed lens is represented for five different frequencies in the
is plotted in Fig. 5(b). Very good agreement between measured
9–11 GHz band. At the design frequency of 10 GHz, it is shown
and theoretical near fields is shown for the focal widths and side-
in Fig. 6(a) that follows the specified variation from
lobe levels. Thus, these results experimentally confirm the high
at to at
focusing efficiency of the designed prototype. Note that it is not
the lens edge position . For lower frequencies, the
possible to measure the relative phase difference between dif-
modulated is shifted to more negative values, reaching
ferent field components necessary to plot the fields in circular
a variation from to at 9 GHz. On the contrary, higher
polarization, due to the fact that we need to manually rotate the
frequencies tilt the local scanning angles towards broadside, as
probe.
can be seen at 11 GHz with a variation of from 0 to
. Actually, the central region of the lens is in the stopband
III. DESCRIPTION OF FREQUENCY STEERING OF THE FOCUS regime at this frequency of 11 GHz, and therefore this central
Leaky-wave antennas are known to be strongly frequency zone does not contribute to radiation. This stopband regime is
dispersive: this behavior has been classically used in 1D leaky characterized by null values of and a sudden rise in
lines to scan a fan beam in the far field [24]. Recently, it was [24], [26], as it can be observed in Fig. 6 at 11 GHz in the section
theoretically demonstrated in [16] that a 1D leaky lens has the contained between and .
equivalent property in the near-field, resulting in the shifting of Nevertheless, the dispersion with frequency suffered by the
the position of the focus as the frequency is varied. However, the locally-modulated radiating angle shown in Fig. 6(a), translates
case of 1D leaky-line sources is quite different to the scenario in a displacement of the focal length as qualitatively illustrated
studied here of 2D leaky apertures. 2D leaky-wave antennas in Fig. 7. For higher frequencies the emerging rays tend to
are normally operated at the frequency which satisfies the split- broadside, thus converging at a higher distance. Besides, it is
ting-condition to radiate a pencil beam at broadside [24]–[27]. expected that the focal depth noticeably increases for higher

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BLANCO et al.: HOLOGRAPHIC SURFACE LEAKY-WAVE LENSES 3489

Fig. 6. Dispersion with frequency of the tapered cylindrical leaky wave along Fig. 8. Dispersion with frequency of the aperture fields along the radial dis-
the radial distance of the designed holographic lens. tance for , in the designed holographic lens.

variation created by the spiral shape. As an example, Fig. 8

shows the variation with frequency of the amplitude and phase
terms and for ( -axis), when introducing in (4) and
(5) the tapered leaky-mode dispersion behavior shown in Fig. 6
for the five studied frequencies.
Already by looking to the frequency variation of these terms,
one can study the impact of the frequency on the near-fields.
This theory is particularly suited to analyze large antennas as a
function of the frequencies, where direct full-wave simulations
become prohibitive. As shown in Fig. 8(a), the aperture phase
has a quadratic-type parabolic response which eccentricity
decreases for higher frequencies (which will result in a higher
Fig. 7. Scheme illustrating the dispersion of the focal region with frequency. focal point). The amplitude of the aperture fields in Fig. 8(b) also
changes as frequency is varied, observing at higher frequencies
the non-illuminated central region due to the aforementioned
frequencies as a result of the increased focal height [1]–[4], as stopband.
also illustrated in Fig. 7. The theoretical near fields created by the focused aperture at
To accurately compute the near-fields created by the designed any frequency can be computed using a Green’s function for-
lens at any frequency, one can modify the analysis theory pre- malism. Fig. 9 shows the intensity of the fields at the plane,
sented in [18], obtaining the following complex aperture fields and for four different frequencies. The focused region shifts to
as a function of frequency higher heights as frequency moves from 9 GHz to 11 GHz, and it
is also observed an evident enlargement of the 3 dB focal depth
(3) in the -axis. On the other hand, the 3 dB focal width along the
-axis does not change so intensely as frequency is varied. For
(4) 12 GHz, the focusing pattern strongly varies, and the focal re-
gion is no more located at the lens vertical -axis. The single
(5) focus located at splits into several hot spots. This phe-
nomenon is similar to the splitting condition in 2D leaky-wave
antennas focused at the far-field regime, whose single-beam fo-
cused at broadside splits into a scanned conical beam for higher
(6) frequencies [24]–[26]. Similarly, for the case of 2D leaky-wave
lenses focused in the near-field zone, it is obtained a splitting
Where the term describes the amplitude modulation of from a single focus to a conical (toroidal) focus.
the aperture (due to the tapering of the leaky-phase constant), This behavior with frequency is also evident in Fig. 10, which
stands for the phase modulation due to the tapering of the represents the field cuts in the transverse plane for each
leakage rate, and the term describes the azimuthal phase-shift studied frequency, and for the resultant focal height ( at 9

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3490 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 7, JULY 2013

Fig. 9. Theoretical near-field intensity at -plane as a function of frequency.

Fig. 11. Theoretical near-field intensity along -axis for the corresponding
focal heights as a function of frequency a) Amplitude and b) phase patterns.

The results shown in Figs. 9 and 10 correspond to the RHCP

component. The response of the crosspol LHCP component as
frequency is varied in the steering bandwidth (9–11 GHz) is
also shown in Fig. 11(a) for the transverse -cut, and for the
corresponding focal heights (results are similar for the -cut).
As it can be seen, pure RHCP focused near fields are obtained
at the lens axis ( ) in the entire scanning bandwidth,
with increased RHCP and LHCP sidelobes as the focal height
is frequency steered. Also, it is shown an increase of the focal
width as the focal length is enlarged. The level of the LHCP
is relatively high due to the limited control of the polarization
in the presented lens antenna. A design based on resonant per-
pendicular slots such as the ones used in RSLA antennas [22],
[23] would have led to a better control of this polarization. This
increase in the LHCP can be attributed to the spatial distortion
Fig. 10. Theoretical near-field intensity at plane as a function of frequency
and for the corresponding focal heights. suffered by the phase pattern, which is shown in Fig. 11(b).

B. Experimental Validation of Frequency Dispersion

GHz, at 10 GHz, and at 11 GHz). A
single focal region with maximum energy concentrated above The near fields were measured along the -axis from
the lens center ( ) is obtained for the scanning band to for five frequencies in the 9.2–11 GHz
comprised between 9 and 11 GHz. At 12 GHz, however, it is band. The measured component is compared with the field
clearly observed the splitting of the focus into two focused zones obtained from the theoretical dispersion of the leaky wave (LW),
approximately located at . This splitting showing very good agreement as it can be seen in Fig. 12. As
condition above 11 GHz limits the upper operation frequency of predicted by theory, the focal length and the focal depth aug-
the scanning lens. On the other hand, the lower frequency band ment as frequency is increased. The amplitude of component
is determined by the radiation cutoff of the leaky-wave, presents similar response with frequency, and it is not shown for
which in our case is below 9 GHz. brevity. As expected, balanced amplitude of the transverse fields

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BLANCO et al.: HOLOGRAPHIC SURFACE LEAKY-WAVE LENSES 3491

Fig. 12. Frequency dispersion of field intensity at the axial cut.

and negligible component was obtained for all this scanning

frequency range.
The and fields in the transverse -axis ( ) at a
fixed height, , are shown in Fig. 13(a) and (b) at
9.5 GHz and 10.5 GHz, respectively. The agreement with the
measurements is in within the possible inaccuracies introduced
by the measurement setup when displacing manually the probe.
The experiments are consistent with theory, thus validating the
approach to obtain the frequency dispersion of the fields also
in the transverse directions. Fig. 13(c) compares the theoretical
distortion of the transverse focusing pattern at a fixed height as
frequency is varied, observing that the highest focusing effect
(minimum focal width for ) is obtained at 10 GHz, which
corresponds to the frequency for which the focal distance is lo-
cated at the observation height . Similar validation
for the fields in the transverse -axis ( ) was obtained,
but it is not shown due to space restriction.
Fig. 14 shows the variation of the focal length, width and
depth, as frequency is shifted between 9 GHz and 11 GHz. CST
results are compared with leaky theory, and also experimental Fig. 13. Frequency dispersion of field intensity along -axis for .
data are plotted with circles, observing good agreement. This
figure summarizes the performance of the novel holographic
lens as a frequency-steering device with 20% bandwidth.
The focal length can be scanned from at 9
GHz to at 11 GHz, observing increased steering
sensitivity (mm/GHz) for higher frequencies. The focal depth
has a corresponding growth from at 9 GHz to
at 11 GHz, while the focal width changes
from at 9 GHz to at 11 GHz. Above
11 GHz, the focus splits into two lateral focused regions, as it
was described before, and the lens loses the capacity to generate
a single focused zone at the vertical axis.
Finally, Fig. 15 shows the variation with frequency of the
focusing efficiency and the radiation efficiency. The focusing Fig. 14. Variation of focal length, depth and width with frequency.
efficiency has been computed from the focal width for each
principal transverse plane as described in [18].
The theoretical radiation efficiency has been calculated Full-wave CST simulations are compared with leaky theory,
directly from the leaky-wave leakage distribution (neglecting providing very good matching in the entire bandwidth. Also, the
ohmic losses) as focusing efficiency measured at the central frequency is plotted
with a circle. At the design frequency of 10 GHz, the specified
70% focusing efficiency for both principal planes and 80% ra-
(7) diation efficiency are obtained. As frequency is increased, the

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3492 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 7, JULY 2013

allows electronically adjustment of the focus position in a re-

gion by simply changing the frequency of the input signal. Max-
imum focal length is limited by the splitting of the single focus
above a certain frequency. This is a general behavior for any
holographic near-field lens, due to the dispersive nature of the
modulated leaky wave. In the designed lens, the focal length has
been steered from 10 cm to 25 cm as frequency was increased
from 9 GHz to 11 GHz (20% bandwidth), showing a significant
increase in the focal depth from 10 cm to 30 cm, while the focal
width varies from 2 cm to 4 cm. This interesting frequency re-
sponse has been accurately and efficiently predicted by the pro-
posed theory for modulated leaky modes, and it might be useful
for microwave imaging, sensing and heating applications. Com-
pared to electronically scanned focused antennas [11], [17], fre-
Fig. 15. Variation of focusing and radiation efficiencies with frequency. quency scanning provides a much simpler mechanism to steer
the focus, avoiding the use of expensive active circuits such as
phase shifters [11] or FET transistors [17].
radiation efficiency decreases as a result of the generation of the Therefore, the novel printed-circuit leaky-wave lens opens to
non-radiative central region of the lens, which was illustrated in a new variety of microwave focusing devices which are highly
Fig. 8, resulting in at 11 GHz. On the contrary, efficient, extremely simple, and low-cost (if compared to current
the focusing efficiency tends to increase to 100% as frequency is state-of-the-art technologies), and which provide the interesting
augmented, as a result of the stronger growth in the focal length capability of frequency adjustment of the focal length. For the
than in the focal width (which results in higher ratios and authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that these features are
therefore in higher values of [18]), as it was summarized proposed and experimentally demonstrated.
in Fig. 14. The opposite behavior is observed as frequency is
decreased, showing higher radiation efficiency around 85% and
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bart, “Holographic surface leaky-wave lenses with circularly-po- nology for space applications. In 2000, he joined the Radio Frequency Divi-
larized focused near-fields. Part I: Concept, design and analysis sion, Industry Alcatel Espacio, Madrid, Spain, where he was involved with the
theory,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., submitted for publica- development of microwave active circuits for telemetry, tracking and control
tion. (TTC) transponders for space applications. In 2001, he joined the Technical
[19] M. Ettorre and A. Grbic, “Generation of propagating Bessel beams University of Cartagena (UPCT), Spain, as an Assistant Professor. From Oc-
using leaky-wave modes,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 60, tober 2005 to February 2009, he held de position of Vice Dean for Students and
no. 8, pp. 3605–3613, Aug. 2012. Lectures affairs in the Telecommunication Engineering Faculty at the UPCT.
[20] M. Ettorre, S. M. Rudolph, and A. Grbic, “Generation of propagating Since 2008, he has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Commu-
Bessel beams using leaky-wave modes: Experimental validation,” nication and Information Technologies, UPCT. His current research interests
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 60, no. 6, pp. 2645–2653, Jun. include: 1- The development of numerical methods for the analysis and design
2012. of leaky-wave devices in planar and waveguide technologies, 2- Their appli-
[21] F. J. Goebels and K. C. Kelly, “Arbitrary polarization from annular slot cation for telecoms, RFID, microwave heating/sensing, wireless power trans-
planar antennas,” IRE Trans. on Antenna and Propagat., pp. 342–349, mission/harvesting, hyperthermia, and analog signal processing. 3- The inno-
Jul. 1961. vation in the area of higher-education teaching/learning. He has authored or
[22] M. Ando, K. Sakurai, N. Goto, K. Arimura, and Y. Ito, “A radial line co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal papers. He has been visiting re-
slot antenna for 12 GHz satellite TV reception,” IEEE Trans. Antennas searcher/professor at University of Loughborough (U.K.), Heriot-Watt Univer-
Propag., vol. 33, no. 12, pp. 1347–1353, Dec. 1985. sity (UK, Scotland), Queen’s University of Belfast (UK, Northern Ireland), and
[23] H. Sasazawa, Y. Oshima, K. Sakurai, M. Ando, and N. Goto, “Slot CSIRO-ICT Centre (Sydney, Australia).
coupling in a radial line slot antenna for 12-GHz band satellite TV re- Dr. Gómez Tornero received in July 2004 the national award from the foun-
ception,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 36, no. 9, pp. 1221–1226, dation EPSON-Ibérica to the best Ph.D project in the field of Technology of
Sep. 1988. Information and Communications (TIC). In June 2006, Dr. Gómez-Tornero re-
[24] A. A. Oliner and D. R. Jackson, “Leaky-wave antennas,” in Antenna ceived the Vodafone foundation-COIT/AEIT (Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros de
Engineering Handbook, J. L. Volakis, Ed., 4th ed. New York: Mc- Telecomunicación) award to the best Spanish Ph.D. thesis in the area of Ad-
Graw-Hill, 2007, ch. 11. vanced Mobile Communications Technologies. This thesis was also awarded in
[25] G. Lovat, P. Burghignoli, and D. R. Jackson, “Fundamental properties December 2006 as the best thesis in the area of Electrical Engineering, by the
and optimization of broadside radiation from uniform leaky-wave an- Technical University of Cartagena. In February 2010, Dr. Gómez Tornero was
tennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, pp. 1442–1452, May appointed CSIRO Distinguished Visiting Scientist by the CSIRO ICT Centre,
2006. Sydney. He is the recipient or co-recipient of the 2010 IEEE Engineering Ed-
[26] P. Burghignoli, G. Lovat, and D. R. Jackson, “Analysis and optimiza- ucation conference award, the 2011 EuCAP best student paper prize, the 2012
tion of leaky-wave radiation at broadside from a class of 1-D peri- EuCAP best antenna theory paper prize, and the 2012 Spanish URSI second
odic structures,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, no. 9, pp. prize to the best student paper.
2593–2603, Sep. 2006.
[27] G. Minatti, F. Caminita, M. Casaletti, and S. Maci, “Spiral leaky-wave
antennas based on modulated surface impedance,” IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 4436–4444, Dec. 2011.
[28] N. Llombart, A. Neto, G. Gerini, and P. de Maagt, “Planar circularly
symmetric EBG structures for reducing surface waves in printed
antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 10, pp. Eva Rajo-Iglesias (SM’08) was born in Monforte de
3210–3218, Oct. 2005. Lemos, Spain, in 1972. She received the M.Sc. de-
[29] B. Fong, J. S. Colburn, J. J. Ottusch, J. L. Visher, and D. F. gree in telecommunication engineering from the Uni-
Sievenpiper, “Scalar and tensor holographic artificial impedance versity of Vigo, Spain, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree
surfaces,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 10, pp. in telecommunication from the University Carlos III
3212–3221, Oct. 2010. of Madrid, Spain, in 2002.
[30] G. Minatti, F. Caminita, M. Casaletti, and S. Maci, “Spiral leaky- She was a Teacher Assistant with the University
wave antennas based on modulated surface impedance,” IEEE Carlos III of Madrid from 1997 to 2001. She joined
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 4436–4444, Dec. the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, Cartagena,
2011. Spain, as a Teacher Assistant, in 2001. She joined
[31] A. Albani, A. Mazzinghi, and A. Freni, “Automatic design of University Carlos III of Madrid as a Visiting Lec-
CP-RLSA antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., to be pub- turer in 2002, where she has been an Associate Professor with the Department
lished. of Signal Theory and Communications since 2004. She visited the Chalmers
University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, as a Guest Researcher, in 2004,
2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, and has been an Affiliate Professor with the An-
tenna Group, Signals and Systems Department, since 2009. She has co-authored
more than 50 papers in international journals and more than 100 papers in in-
ternational conferences. Her current research interests include microstrip patch
Darwin Blanco received the Electrical Engineering antennas and arrays, metamaterials, artificial surfaces and periodic structures,
degree from the University of Antioquia, Colombia, MIMO systems and optimization methods applied to electromagnetism.
in 2009 and the master degrees in Multimedia and Dr. Rajo-Iglesias was the recipient of the Loughborough Antennas and Prop-
Communications from the University Carlos III de agation Conference Best Paper Award in 2007 and the Best Poster Award in the
Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 2011, where he is currently field of Metamaterial Applications in Antennas sponsored by the IET Antennas
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Multimedia and Com- and Propagation Network, at the conference Metamaterials 2009: 3rd Interna-
munications. tional Congress on Advanced Electromagnetic Materials in Microwaves and
His current research interests include leaky wave Optics. She is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Antennas and Prop-
antennas, frequency selective surfaces and phase agation Magazine and of the IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION
array antennas. LETTERS.

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3494 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 7, JULY 2013

Nuria Llombart (S’06–M’07) received the Elec- September 2012, she is an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of
trical Engineering degree and the Ph.D. degree from Delft in The Netherlands.
the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, in Dr. Llombart has co-authored over 20 journal contributions, 4 patents
2002 and 2006 respectively. and over 70 contributions in international conferences. Dr. Llombart was
During her Master’s degree studies she spent co-recipient of several NASA awards and of the H.A. Wheeler Award for
one year at the Friedrich-Alexander University the Best Applications Paper of the year 2008 in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS
of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and worked ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION. She serves as Topical Editor for the IEEE
at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, TRANSACTIONS ON TERAHERTZ SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, IEEE ANTENNAS
Erlangen, Germany. From 2002 until 2007, she AND PROPAGATION WIRELESS LETTERS, and for the Antenna Applications
was with the Antenna Group at the TNO Defence, Corner of the IEEE Magazine on Antennas and Propagation. She is also
Security and Safety Institute, The Hague, The a board member of the IRMMW-THz International Society. Her research
Netherlands. From 2007 until 2010, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the interests include the analysis and design of planar antennas, periodic structures,
California Institute of Technology, working for the Sub millimeter Wave reflector antennas, lens antennas, and waveguide structures, with emphasis in
Advance Technology group of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, the THz range.
USA. She was a “Ramón y Cajal” fellowship at the Optics Department of
the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, from 2010 to 2012. Since

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