A Wideband 1-bit Reconfigurable Folded Reflectarray Antenna With Simultaneous 2-D Beam-Scanning Capability and Low Scan Loss

A wideband, electronically reconfigurable folded reflectarray antenna (RFRA) is proposed, fabricated, and tested, offering wide-angle 2-D beam-scanning in both the azimuth and elevation planes with low scanning loss. The RFRA consists of a reconfigurable polarization conversion surface (RPCS), a polarization selection surface (PSS), and a planar magnetic-electric (ME) dipole antenna used as the feed. The RPCS is constructed by integrating two positive-intrinsic-negative diodes (PIN) into each element, thus achieving linear polarization conversion and 1-bit phase encoding through the control of the “ON/OFF” states of the PIN diodes. The PSS transmits only x-polarized incident waves and fully reflects y-polarized incident waves. Owing to the properties of the RPCS and PSS, the RFRA can generate x-polarized radiation with 2-D beam control capabilities. The proposed RFRA, which is fully integrated and manufactured using low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) technology, consisting of 16 × 16 elements, has been verified through theoretical analysis, full-wave simulation and experimental measurement. The measured results indicate that the beam-scanning angle is ±50° in both the azimuth and elevation planes, with a scanning loss of 2.4 dB. The maximum gain is 19.8 dBi, accompanied by an aperture efficiency (AE) of 15.9%. The 3 dB gain bandwidth is 15.5%, ranging from 12.4 to 14.5 GHz. This RFRA exhibits excellent performance and can be applied in fields such as satellite communication and radar.