Design of a Bifocal Single Reflectarray Antenna with Improving Beam Scanning Performance

A novel scheme is introduced to design the high gain beam scanning reflectarray antennas for limited scan range application. At first, various existing schemes for beam scanning reflectarray antennas design are reviewed and it is concluded that as a convenient design scheme, the feed displacement technique is preferred for limited scan range applications. In order to improve the scan range, a bifocal single reflector aperture phase is introduced for reflectarray aperture phase design, and in order to further improve the performance, a circular path for feed displacement is introduced to take the place of the conventional lateral path. Based on the introduced scheme, a Ku band bifocal single reflectarray antenna is designed for limited scan range application. The scan performances of the designed reflectarray are analyzed numerically and compared with conventional parabolic design. Numerical results show that the bifocal design shows significant improved scan performance with less 0.8 dB gain loss and lower than -13 dB side lobe level over entire scan range -30° to +30°, which illustrates that the bifocal design for limited field of view beam scanning reflectarray is a promising attempt.