Dual-polarized bidirectional beam-steering array with beam-scanning capability in full-space

This paper presents a dual -polarized bidirectional electronically reconfigurable beam -steering array (DBSA) for the first time, which integrates the beam -scanning capabilities of both dual -polarized reconfigurable transmitarray and dual -polarized reconfigurable reflectarray. First, a novel phase and direction reconfigurable dual -polarized element is proposed. Four PIN diodes are soldered onto the symmetric transmitting patches to tune the 1 -bit transmission phase, while two PIN diodes are soldered onto the reflecting patches to tune the 1 -bit reflection phase. By controlling the states of the PIN diodes, the DBSA element can achieve 1 -bit reconfigurable phase in both transmission and reflection modes. Second, based on the proposed element, a 100 -element DBSA prototype is fabricated and measured. At dual -polarization, the angles of the scanned beams can reach 45 degrees and 222 degrees in forward- and backward -spaces. Therefore, the proposed novel method opens a new avenue to designing a dual -polarized electronically reconfigurable spatially fed array antenna with fullspace beam -scanning capabilities, and the proposed design is suitable for dual -polarized bidirectional wireless communication applications.