3-D-Printed All-Metal Conformal Circularly Polarized Reflectarray Antenna at X-Band
Yifan Wang, Min Han, Wenbin Dou, Teng Li
Abstract
This paper presents a proposal for a 3-D printed all-metal conformal circularly polarized reflectarray antenna operating in the X-band. The reflectarray element is constructed with a quasi-I-shaped arm with a pillar at the center as support. To enhance the angular stability of the reflection response for oblique incidence, twelve metal blocks are introduced around the element. Additionally, a compact wideband 3-D printed circularly polarized horn antenna is designed as the feeding source. A novel method for estimating the aperture efficiency of the conformal reflectarray is derived to determine the reflection phase distribution of the reflectarray and the position of the feeding antenna. To validate the proposed reflectarray element and approach, an all-metal 15×15 3-D printed conformal reflectarray is designed, fabricated, and measured. The experimental results demonstrate a 42.3% (8.2-12.6 GHz) 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth, a 11.4% (10.4-11.6 GHz) 1 dB gain bandwidth, a 27% (9.6-12.6 GHz) 3 dB gain bandwidth, and a 40.7% aperture efficiency.