Digitized Reconfigurable Metal Reflectarray Surfaces for Millimeter-Wave Beam-Engineering

Digitized beam-forming metal reflectarray antennas are designed for the millimeter-wave region. The phase control of antennas has been implemented by the reconfiguration of rectangular grooves on a metal plate. The antenna has 1147 elements arranged in an aluminum metal plate. The depths of all metal grooves are manipulated for designed phase control of high-gain beam-aimed reflectors. We have demonstrated a digitized reconfigurable metal reflectarray to steer a re-radiated millimeter-wave field from the reflector in a two-dimensional scanning plane from −20∘ to 20∘. The far-field patterns show that the measured gain of the 2-bit reflectarray is only 1 dB lower than that of a non-digitized reflectarray antenna. The measured peak gain is higher than 31.7 dB, and the measurements show that the gain of the full 40∘ scanned beam is 31.7 dB and well-defined scanned beams are obtained with a maximum scan gain loss of 0.2 dB. The proposed reconfigurable antennas can be a useful candidate for high-gain beam-aimed antennas for practical reflecting surfaces and a variety of wireless and satellite communication systems.