A 1-Bit Electronically Reconfigurable Reflectarray Antenna in X Band

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 66567 - 66575
• Main Authors: Zhang, Hai, Chen, Xuxiang, Wang, Zhenglong, Ge, Yuehe, Pu, Jixiong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Apertures; beam-scanning; Circuits; Efficiency; Electric fields; Field programmable gate arrays; PIN diode; PIN diodes; PIN photodiodes; Prototypes; reconfigurable antenna; Reflectarray antenna; Reflection; Reflector antennas; Superhigh frequencies
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2918231

In this paper, a fully electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antenna that has <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">14\times 14 </tex-math></inline-formula> reflecting elements and features a higher aperture efficiency was designed, fabricated, and tested. A new configuration of the reflecting element was first developed so that all the bias circuit and the PIN diode are arranged on the opposite side of the reflecting surface, avoiding the potential unexpected reflection and aiming at the improvement of the antenna efficiency. The new reflecting element, which has a smaller size (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">0.365\lambda </tex-math></inline-formula>), was then applied to the design of a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">14\times 14 </tex-math></inline-formula> reconfigurable reflectarray antenna. A field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based beam control system was also developed for the realization of an electronically beam-scanning performance. The measurements of the prototype of the integrated reconfigurable reflectarray antenna show good beam-scanning radiation performance, a peak gain of 19.2 dBi, and an aperture efficiency of about 25%.