Beam‐scanning improvement of reflectarrays by reducing the cell size at millimetre waves

Most reflectarrays use a half-wavelength cell size. In this paper, we present a new reflector-antenna configuration that provides beam scanning and gain improvements by reducing the size of the cells. Small reflectarrays with cell sizes λ/2 and λ/4, respectively, have been designed at 94 GHz. The measured λ/4 reflectarray at 94 GHz achieves a beam scanning angle of ±60° with a loss of gain of 1 dB, whereas the λ/2 one exhibits a loss of 3 dB. Numerical simulations show that the improvement does not appear significant below the limit of λ/6. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 48: 966–968, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.21534