Analytical Investigation on a New Approach for Achieving Deep Penetration in a Lossy Medium: The Lossy Prism

Recent studies highlighted deep-penetration prop-erties of inhomogeneous waves at the interface between a loss-less and a lossy medium. Such waves can be generated bymeans of radiating structures known as Leaky-Wave Anten-nas (LWAs). Here, a different approach is proposed basedon the use of a lossy prism capable to generate an inhomo-geneous wave when illuminated by a homogeneous wave. Thelossy prism is conceived and designed thinking of Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR). The results achieved by the lossyprism will be compared with those obtained by means of a pre-viously designed LWA that was created with the identical ob-jective. The approach of this paper is purely theoretical, andit aims at providing basic ideas and preliminary results usefulfor an innovative LWA design.