A novel dual band patch design for electrical steerable reflectarray antennas

ABSTRACT

Reflectarray antennas do not necessarily exhibit a better antenna efficiency compared to ordinary reflector antennas. However, flat structure, multiband design capability, and specially, possibility of electrical beam scanning of this type of antenna are attractive to the antenna designers and researchers. By using elements with electrically tunable reflection phases, it is possible to design an electrically steerable beam reflectarray. In this paper, a novel dual band element is presented for which the reflection phase within each band can be controlled independently. Therefore, the reflectarray arranged by this element can perform the functions of two electrically steerable antennas simultaneously. An aperture coupled element and a miniaturized diplexer are used in the proposed structure. The reflection phase of the designed element can be controlled by changing the lengths of the output lines of the diplexer. It is possible to electrically change this line length using MEM switches. As a result, a dual band reflectarray with independent electrical beam scanning capabilities in each of its frequency bands is obtained.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual band reflectarray element
• electrical steerable antenna
• reflectarray antenna

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

H. Razmjoo

H. Razmjoo was born in Shiraz, Iran, on 1986. He received his BSc and MSc degrees in electrical engineering from Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran, in 2008 and 2011. He is currently working toward a PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. His research interests include antenna design, computational electromagnetics, high-frequency circuit simulation, and RF circuit design.

H. Abiri

H. Abiri received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran, and the D.E.A. and Doctor d' Ingenieur degrees from National Polytechnique Institute of Grenoble (INPG), Grenoble, France, in 1978, 1981, and 1984, respectively. In 1985, he was an Assistant Professor with the University of Savoie, Chambery, France. Since 1985, he has been with the Electrical Engineering Department, Shiraz University, where he is now a Professor. In 1995, he was on sabbatical leave at the Electrical Engineering Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins. His research interests include numerical methods in electromagnetic theory, microwave circuits, and integrated optics. Dr. Abiri is a member of the Iranian Association of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

A. Yahaghi

A. Yahaghi received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, in 2002, the M.Sc. degree in fields and waves communication engineering from the Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree from Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran, in 2010, where he is currently a full-time Assistant Professor with the Department of Communication and Electronics Engineering. From 2008 to 2009, he was with the Laboratory for Electromagnetic Fields and Microwave Electronics (IFH), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, as an Academic Guest. From 2014 to 2016, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Researcher with the Ultrafast Optics and X-Rays Division, CFEL, DESY, Hamburg, Germany. His research interests include numerical methods in electromagnetics and optics, metamaterials and metasurfaces, plasmonics, and transformation optics.