Patent ID: 11916291
Assignee: DUKE UNIVERSITY
Field: Telecommunications (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. An apparatus comprising:
a traveling-wave antenna array comprising a plurality of adjacent traveling-wave antennas, wherein each of the adjacent traveling-wave antennas includes:
a radiating waveguide or cavity; and
a plurality of tunable elements that are arranged in a single direction along a surface of the radiating waveguide or cavity, wherein the plurality of tunable elements are spaced at, near, or above a Nyquist limit spacing for the apparatus to form an array of tunable elements across the traveling-wave antenna array;

a phase diversity feed coupled to a corresponding aperture of each adjacent traveling-wave antenna in the traveling-wave antenna array, the phase diversity feed comprising a feed waveguide or an array of passive phase shifters that is separate from each radiating waveguide or cavity, the feed waveguide providing a selected phase diverse input to two or more of the plurality of adjacent traveling-wave antennas, the phase diverse input comprising a first phase for a first traveling-wave antenna and a second phase for a second traveling-wave antenna, wherein the first and second phases are specifically selected based on one or more characteristics of the traveling-wave antenna array to suppress or eliminate grating lobes in an output radiation pattern; and
a plurality of grayscale tuning elements that tune the plurality of tunable elements along one or more ranges of one or more tuning variables to form one or more specific output radiation patterns through the traveling-wave antenna array based on the input.