Design and Validation of a Reconfigurable Single Varactor-Tuned Reflectarray

Abstract

An aperture-coupled reflectarray element giving a full phase tuning range with a single varactor diode is proposed in this paper for pattern reconfigurability applications. The full phase agility is achieved by a proper optimization of the phase tuning line, thus providing an alternate inductive/capacitive effect able to avoid the use of two varactor diodes, usually adopted in similar existing configurations. The proposed active element structure is adopted to design a demonstrative reflectarray prototype of 3 <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex Notation="TeX">$\,\times\,$</tex></formula> 15 radiators. Furthermore, an own synthesis procedure is applied to obtain the proper biasing voltages giving the prescribed H-plane field. Test examples of beam-scanning, multibeam, and shaped-beam patterns are discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.