Additively Manufactured Dielectric Reflectarray Antenna for Millimeter-Wave Satellite Communication

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 23; no. 4; pp. 1276 - 1280
• Main Authors: Tiwari, Suchitra, Singh, Amit K., Dubey, Ankit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.04.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Additive manufacturing; Anechoic chambers; Antenna arrays; Antenna feeds; Antenna radiation patterns; Antennas; Apertures; Dielectrics; Horn antennas; metamaterial; Metamaterials; Microstrip antennas; Millimeter wave communication; Millimeter wave technology; Millimeter waves; millimeter-wave; Pattern analysis; Performance evaluation; reflectarray; Reflection; Reflector antennas; satellite communication; Satellite communications; Three dimensional printing; Unit cell
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2024.3351891

A highly proficient and compact 3-D-printed dielectric reflectarray (DR) antenna is engineered, fabricated, and tested to ensure wideband functionality for millimeter-wave satellite communication (SATCOM). Initially, a dielectric metamaterial unit cell (UC) having a periodicity of 0.28λ 0 (here, λ 0 is the free-space wavelength at 28 GHz) is proposed. Next, a DR structure is meticulously designed by arranging eight different variants of the proposed UC in an 18 × 18 array according to the obtained 3 b quantized phase profile, resulting in an overall aperture area of 25.4<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">{\lambda }_0^2</tex-math></inline-formula>. The proposed DR is primarily analyzed for its performance using radiation pattern analysis based on array theory followed by full-wave simulation. The entire DR antenna setup consists of a 3-D-printed horn antenna acting as a primary feed source, placed at a separation of 47 mm from DR along the + z -direction supported by a 3-D-printed structural framework. The DR antenna is additively manufactured, and its performance evaluation is done in an anechoic chamber revealing a measured half-power bandwidth of 43% with a peak gain of 23.8 dBi at 28 GHz, showcasing a notable gain enhancement of 9.7 dB compared to prior designs, translating to a remarkable maximum aperture efficiency of 75%.