A Dual-Polarized Reconfigurable Reflectarray Antenna Based on a Symmetrically Rotated Sub-Array

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel method for designing a dual-polarized reconfigurable reflectarray antenna (RRA) based on a symmetrically rotated sub-array operating in a single-band. To improve aperture efficiency and prevent grating lobes, a miniaturized unit cell of a rectangular ring patch with a size of $0.3\lambda _{0}$ is adopted, where the $\lambda _{0}$ is a wavelength in free-space for a center frequency of 10 GHz. By employing the RRA with a symmetrically rotated sub-array, a significant suppression of the cross-polarization level (CPL) and a slight enhancement in peak gain are both achieved. The dual-polarized metasurface with 164 elements is assembled using a feeding structure optimized with F/D = 0.52. The beam steerable RRA is electronically controlled by a control board and has a wide beam steering range of up to ± 60°. The high aperture efficiencies of 26.2% and 27.0%, and relatively low CPLs of −22.6 and −22.8 dB for the $x$ - and $y$ -polarized beams were measured, respectively. Furthermore, the extended functions of the presented RRA, such as dual-polarized dual-beam steering and circular polarized beam steering, are confirmed in full-wave simulation.

Keywords

• Metasurface
• PIN diode
• 1-bit
• aperture efficiency
• cross-polarization