We consider the scattering of a plane wave by a locally perturbed periodic (with respect to x_1) medium. If there is no perturbation it is usually assumed that the scattered wave is quasi-periodic with the same parameter as the incident plane wave. As it is well known, one can show existence under this condition but not necessarily uniqueness. Uniqueness fails for certain incident directions (if the wavenumber is kept fixed), and it is not clear which additional condition has to be assumed in this case. In this paper we will analyze three concepts. For the Limiting Absorption Principle (LAP) we replace the refractive index n=n(x) by n(x)+iε in a layer of finite width and consider the limiting case when ε tends to zero. This will give an unsatisfactory condition. In a second approach we require continuity of the field with respect to the incident direction. This will give the same satisfactory condition as the third approach where we approximate the incident plane wave by an incident point source and let the location of the source tend to infinity.

In this paper we consider the propagation of waves in an open waveguide in R^2 where the index of refraction is a local perturbation of a function which is periodic along the axis of the waveguide and equal to one outside a strip of finite width. Motivated by the limiting absorption principle (proven in an ealier paper by the author for the case of an open waveguide in the half space) we formulate a radiation condition which allows the existence of propagating modes and prove uniqueness, existence, and stability of a solution. In the last part we investigate the decay properties of the radiating part in the direction of periodicity and orthogonal to it.