@article {18_TAP_PABLO-SANCHEZ_WG-SLOT-ARRAY-TUNING-SCREWS, title = {Mechanical Technique to Customize a Waveguide-Slot Radiating Performance}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation}, volume = {66}, year = {2018}, pages = {426-431}, abstract = {A mechanical technique to tune the radiating performance of a waveguide-fed slot is presented. Three metallic tuning screws are introduced through the bottom wall of the feeding waveguide. The field radiated by the slot is mechanically controlled with the insertion length of the tuning screws and a good input matching response is also maintained. One of the tuning screws modifies the slot coupling parameter as well as the phase of the transmitted signal, while the other pair of screws compensates the impedance mismatch introduced by the first one. A five-element traveling-wave (TW) linear array antenna has been designed and manufactured as a proof of concept to validate the performance of the tuning screws. Several improvements such as a main beam steering range of 17{\textdegree}, an enhancement of the antenna efficiency, the mitigation of the undesirable grating lobe appearance typical of TW air-waveguide-fed arrays, as well as the compensation of the mutual coupling effects or manufacturing tolerance errors could be experimentally achieved by using the proposed mechanism based on tuning screws.}, keywords = {linear arrays, Slot antennas, waveguide arrays}, issn = {0018-926X}, doi = {10.1109/TAP.2017.2772078}, url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=\&arnumber=8103014}, author = {P Sanchez-Olivares and J L Masa-Campos and J Hernandez-Ortega} } @conference {17_EUCAP_PABLOSANCHEZ_SingleSlot_TuningScrews_eucap, title = {Mechanically reconfigurable waveguide-slot single element using tuning screws}, booktitle = {Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), 2017 11th European Conference on}, year = {2017}, month = {March}, pages = {1962-1966}, abstract = {A mechanically reconfigurable waveguide-slot single radiating element is presented. The tuning mechanism consists on three metallic screws introduced through the bottom wall of the feeding waveguide. The insertion length of the tuning screws and the distance to the slot are used to control the radiated signal as well as to maintain a good input matching response. Several prototypes with different slot lengths have been manufactured to experimentally validate the reconfigurable performance. The proposed triple tuning screw waveguide-slot radiator provides a low cost and simple mechanism to conform a reconfigurable array antenna.}, keywords = {reconfigurable antenna, Slot antennas, waveguide antennas.}, doi = {10.23919/EuCAP.2017.7928264}, url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=\&arnumber=7928264}, author = {P Sanchez-Olivares and J L Masa-Campos and J Hernandez-Ortega} }