Novel Broadband Reflectarray Antenna

with Windmill-Shaped Elements

for Millimeter-Wave Application
Hua Li & Bing-Zhong Wang & Ping Du
Received: 11 December 2006 / Accepted: 14 March 2007 / Published online: 28 March 2007
#
Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract A novel broadband millimeter-wave reflectarray antenna composed of windmill-
shaped elements of variable lengths is proposed. Compared to the conventional single-layer
reflectarray elements, the windmill-shaped elements can realize much larger phase variation
range (over 600), leading to broader bandwidth. Using this technique, a 15-beam-steering
reflectarray operating at 30 GHz is designed. The computed results demonstrate the
agreement of the main beam steering with the design requirement, and a 1-dB gain
bandwidth close to 20% is obtained. The validity of the obtained results is verified by
comparing the ones generated by Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) with
those produced by Ansoft Designer. The antenna is useful for millimeter-wave applications.
Keywords Reflectarray antenna
.
Windmill-shaped element
.
Broadband
.
Millimeter-wave
1 Introduction
Reflectarray antennas are low profile reflectors consisting of a planar array of microstrip
patches, with a certain tuning to produce prescribed beam shape and direction when
Int J Infrared Milli Waves (2007) 28:339344
DOI 10.1007/s10762-007-9218-8
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 90505001), the
High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (No. 2006AA01Z275), and the Creative
Research Group Program of UESTC.
H. Li (*)
:
B.-Z. Wang
:
P. Du
Institute of Applied Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu 610054, Peoples Republic of China
e-mail: lihua2006@uestc.edu.cn
B.-Z. Wang
e-mail: bzwang@uestc.edu.cn
H. Li
Department of Applied Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu 610054, Peoples Republic of China
illuminated by a primary source (Fig. 1) [1]. These antennas are rapidly becoming an
attractive alternative to the traditional parabolic reflector antennas and the array antennas in
some applications because of its advantages, such as a low profile and lower loss, especially
in millimeter wavebands [2]. Associated with the many advantages of the reflectarrays,
there are also some serious shortcomings that need to be resolved, particularly the issue of
limited bandwidth (about35%). To achieve a wider bandwidth for a conventional
reflectarray, techniques such as using thick substrate for the patch and stacking multiple
patches have been employed [3, 4]. However, multilayer configurations are costly and
generally impractical, due to surface wave effects, at millimeter-wave frequencies such as
the Ka-band [5]. A thick substrate, however, has a large unattainable reflection phase range,
which has an adverse effect on gain and overall radiation efficiency [6].
In this paper, a novel single-layer windmill-shaped element structure for millimeter-wave
application is proposed to improve the bandwidth. By simply adjusting the size of the
elements, a much larger phase variation range compared to the conventional single-layer
reflectarray elements is achieved, which gives contribution to a wider bandwidth. In order
to validate the phase data, we designed a 15-beam-steering reflectarray operating at
30 GHz. The simulation results generated by Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulator
(HFSS) and Ansoft Designer demonstrate that the main beam steering agrees with the
Feed
Reference plane
Element
Dielectric substrate
Metal ground
x
y
Fig. 1 Geometry of the reflectar-
ray antenna.
Windmill-shaped patch
Ground
t
a
(Side view) (Top view)
x
y
l
w
l
d
l
a
g
Fig. 2 Top and side views of the windmill-shaped element.
340 Int J Infrared Milli Waves (2007) 28:339344
design requirement and the 1-dB gain bandwidth is close to 20%. This new reflectarray
antenna is very useful for millimeter-wave broadband applications.
2 Element structure and simulation
The reflectarray concept is based on the scattering characteristics of microstrip patches. So
the key technique in the design is how the individual elements are made to scatter the
incident wave with the proper progressive phase shift necessary to produce a phase
coherent beam in a specified direction. Different solutions have been proposed in
literatures: microstrip patches with different resonant lengths [7, 8], patches of the same
size loaded with stubs of variable length, or identical patches with different angular rotation
[912]. The phasing method using variable size patches is a common choice in many
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6
-700
-600
-500
-400
-300
-200
-100
0
100
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
e
d

p
h
a
s
e

(
d
e
g
.
)
Length l (mm)
t=1mm
t=1.5mm
t=2mm
Fig. 3 Reflected phase at normal
incidence versus windmill-
shaped patch length l for different
substrate thickness t a 6mm;
e
r
1:05; w 0:75mm;
d 0:3mm; g 0:15mm.
a side view
b top view
a
b x
z

Fig. 4 Schematic plan of linear array excited by a normal incidence plane wave.
Int J Infrared Milli Waves (2007) 28:339344 341
designs due to its simplicity. But the phasing range (about 340) of such method is not able
to cover all the phases in 0360 [13], which limits the antenna bandwidth. In order to
improve the phasing range, we design a new element structure as shown in Fig. 2. It is a
windmill-shaped metal patch etched with some rectangle slots on a grounded substrate. The
structure parameters are selected with a 6mm; e
r
1:05; w 0:75mm; d 0:3mm;
g 0:15mm, and l 0:1mm 1:5mm.
The phase of the reflected wave is controlled by changing the length of the arm and the
size of the center square slot. Varying such sizes changes the impedance of the windmill-
shaped element and therefore the phase of the reflected wave. The reflected-phase analysis
is carried out by using an equivalent unit cell-wave-guide approach (WGA) [14] with
Ansoft High-Frequency Structure-Simulator (HFSS) software. WGA assumes that a uniform
plane wave is normally incident on an infinite array of periodic structure, and a pair of perfect
magnetic conductors and a pair of perfect electric conductors form the four waveguide side
walls. The reflected-phase is obtained by the phase of reflected coefficient S
11
.
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80
-50
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
R
a
d
i
a
t
i
o
n

p
a
t
t
e
r
n


(
d
B
)
(deg.)
HFSS
Designer
Fig. 5 Computed E-plane radia-
tion patterns of the windmill-
shaped patch reflectarray.
20 25 30 35 40
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
G
a
i
n

(
d
B
)
Frequency (GHz)
Windmill-shaped patch reflectarray
Square patch refelctarray
Fig. 6 Gain against frequency
for the windmill-shaped patch
reflectarray and the square patch
reflectarray at 30 GHz.
342 Int J Infrared Milli Waves (2007) 28:339344
The phase of the reflected wave versus the length l is illustrated in Fig. 3. It can be seen
that very large phasing ranges are obtained. Even if the substrate thickness t is up to 2 mm,
the phasing range is still more than 600.
3 Array design and simulation
In order to validate the phase data of the elements, we designed a 15-beam-steering
reflectarray operating at 30 GHz. Figure 4 shows the basic geometry of this reflectarray
using 118 windmill-shaped patches of variable size. The center spacing between elements
is 0.6 l in the x-direction. The substrate thickness is selected with 2 mm. In general, the
feed may be positioned at an arbitrary angle and distance from the reflectarray, but is
assumed to be far enough from the reflectarray so that the incident field can be
approximated by a plane wave. In our design, we set that the incident field is a plane
wave coming from the normal direction (=0) and linearly polarized along the x-axis. To
steer the main beam off at a given angle
b
relative to broadside, the required phase shift of
the nth element is given as [15]:
7
n

2:
1
na sin
b
1
According to (1) and Fig. 3, we can choose the dimensions of the elements.
Ansoft HFSS and Ansoft Designer are based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) and
the Method of Moments (MOM), respectively. They are used to produce the E-plane (xOz
plane) radiation patterns, as shown in Fig. 5. Both results demonstrate that the main beam is
at 15, quite agreeing with the design requirement.
To make a comparison of gain bandwidth between the windmill-shaped patch
reflectarray and the conventional single-layer reflectarray, a same reflectarray composed
of 18 square patches is designed and simulated. Figure 6 shows the computed gain against
frequency for the two reflectarrays. As shown in this Figure, a 1-dB gain bandwidth of 20%
is achieved by the windmill-shaped patch reflectarray, which is wider than that for the
square patch reflectarray, namely 13.23%.
4 Conclusion
A novel broadband millimeter-wave reflectarray antenna composed of windmill-shaped
elements of variable lengths is proposed in this paper. The windmill-shaped element has the
advantage of realizing much larger phase variation range, compared to the conventional
single-layer reflectarray elements. Using this technique, a 15-beam-steering reflectarray
operating at 30 GHz is designed. The computed results demonstrate the agreement of the
main beam steering with the design requirement and a 1-dB gain bandwidth close to 20%.
This new reflectarray antenna is very useful for millimeter-wave broadband applications.
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