A Low-Profile and Low-Cost Metal-Only Folded Transmitarray Antenna
Haoran Jiang, Linlin Song, Lu Guo
Abstract
A metal-only folded transmitarray antenna (MOFTA) with low-profile, low-cost, and high-gain is proposed in this letter. It consists of three parts, namely a top transmission surface (TS), a bottom reflection surface (RS), and a pyramidal horn as feed. All three parts are made of metal, which could be cost-effective and more tolerant of stringent surroundings. By embedding the feed horn in the bottom RS and together with the top TS, the profile of the proposed MOFTA is reduced to 1/3 of the focal length of the conventional transmitarray. The novelty of this letter is the successful design and implementation methodology of the entire MOFTA structure. According to results from experiments, it can realize a 1 dB gain bandwidth of 10% and peak aperture efficiency of 42%. These appealing characteristics make the designed MOFTA very suitable for a wide range of high-gain applications.