Miniaturized Beam Reconfigurable Reflectarray Antenna With Wide 3-D Beam Coverage

A miniaturized electrical beam-scanning reflectarray antenna providing a directional beam and wide steering ranges with fixed theta-polarization is proposed. To accomplish these properties, we devise a new active reflectarray cell that can control both the phase and polarization of incident waves. Accordingly, we can enforce all reflected waves to constructively interfere with each other in all target directions. To feed the proposed reflectarray cells, an omnidirectional monopole antenna is installed at the center of the reflectarray, which illuminates the reflectarray evenly. In addition, because the monopole feeder is directly connected to the reflectarray, we can significantly reduce the overall volume of the antenna down to about 0.5 lambda(3) with a small F/D ratio of 0.147. Consequently, the proposed antenna attains a wide scan coverage and directional beam patterns. Moreover, the antenna can also maintain polarization direction stably, which is strongly required for dynamically moving platforms such as drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The experimental results agree well with the predictions, proving the validity of our approach.