X-Band Reflectarray Antenna With Switching-Beam Using PIN Diodes and Gathered Elements

Abstract

 An electronically switching-beam reflectarray antenna to be used in X-band has been designed, manufactured and tested, using PIN diodes as switching device. The antenna has 244 elements arranged in a circular aperture. With the aim of saving electronic devices and reducing both manufacturing complexity and cost, the phase control has been implemented at sub-array level, using aperture-coupled patches gathered by pairs to a common delay line. The antenna was designed to switch the beam between +5º, in a scanning plane tilted 18.3º with respect to the YZ plane. Each state was obtained by forward biasing one half of the diodes, while the other half remains in reverse biasing. A third state with the beam pointing to 0º was obtained when all the diodes are in reverse biasing. The concept has been demonstrated by manufacturing and testing a breadboard. The measured radiation patterns fulfill the design requirements.

Reconfigurable Reflectarrays and Array Lenses for Dynamic Antenna Beam Control: A Review

“…Other authors proposed, as previously done in usual phased array antennas, to arrange reflectarray cells into sub-arrays to reduce the number of control elements [69]. Gathering of the elements by pairs was implemented in a full array demonstrator of 122 subarrays, demonstrating the possibility of cost and complexity saving without significant reduction in the performance of the antenna.…”

“…Illustration of the guided-wave approach to RRA phase control: patches elements are aperture coupled to a 1-bit delay line embedding a p-i-n diode. Two antenna elements share the same phase shifter for reducing complexity [69].…”

High Gain Slotted Waveguide Antenna Based on Beam Focusing Using Electrically Split Ring Resonator Metasurface Employing Negative Refractive Index Medium

“…The proposed antenna operates at 10 GHz, and the metasurface structure is optimized to have a negative permeability, negative permittivity and negative refractive index in a wideband around the 10 GHz. Among high microwave frequencies X-band (8-12 GHz) makes a significant contribution to various applied and emerging wireless services [36][37][38][39]. X-band is mostly devoted to point to point wireless applications, such as on-road traffic control [36], air traffic control [37], imaging radar [36][37][38] and satellite communications [39], where low profile and highly directive antennas are appropriated as a reliable and economical solution for the transmission systems.…”

Design fabrication and test of an X-band dual polarized aperture-coupled reflectarray element for beam switching

“…The antenna architecture of [12] is based on a dual reflectarray system comprising a passive subreflectarray and an active main reflectarray made of reconfigurable 1-bit elementary cells based on PIN diodes. Using aperturecoupled patches gathered by pairs to a common delay line as in [13] decreases the number of PIN diodes required to control the beam. The method of [14] uses ring slot resonators and [15] uses tilted patches.…”