Design of a 5-panel Multi-Faceted Reflectarray in Offset Configuration

Abstract

In this paper, a multi-faceted reflectarray structure is proposed to improve the in-band performance of a conventional reflectarray. The proposed antenna consists in 5 panels distributed on an offset cylindrical parabolic structure. To evaluate the improvements of this structure, a 5-panel reflectarray antenna is designed to generates a pencil beam in the broadside direction in Ka-band and it is compared to a single facet reflectarray of equivalent aperture as well as other multifaceted structure. The multi-faceted reflectarray reduces significantly the requirements imposed on the radiating elements what would allow the use of low-cost, low-profile cells without a degradation in antenna performance. Besides, the multi-faceted reflectarray achieves a better in-band performance compared to a conventional reflectarray. Indeed, the bandwidth of the proposed multi-faceted antenna is broader than other multi-faceted structures composed by a smaller number of panels, although the enhancement is smaller compared to the single facet case.