Design of a circular reflectarray with a performance comparable to the typical rectangular reflectarray

Abstract

A circular reflectarray is a novel design combining the unit-ring artificial magnetic conductor with the reflectarray concept. It is shown through simulation that a circular reflectarray with either concentric or radial polarization can be designed with basic performance metrics (directivity, sidelobe level and bandwidth) that are comparable or even better than a conventional rectangular design. It is one goal of this work to explore 2D curvature – using the unit-ring approach – in the realm of reflectarrays designed with circular symmetry. Reflectarrays are chosen as the application to explore these issues as the design process used in creating them borrows from reflector antennas, periodic structures and array theory – thus curvature can be explored from a variety of design domains.