Study of Different Dual-Reflectarray Antenna Configurations for Beam-Scanning Applications

Dual-reflectarray configurations exhibits some advantages from both mechanical and electrical points of view with respect to reflector antennas. Dual-reflectarray antennas present a reduced volume and the capability of being easily folded. Furthermore, these antenna configurations provide phase control on both reflectarray surfaces [1], which can be used to improve the antenna performance for multiple beams, beam scanning or shaped beams. An electronic controllable reflectarray can be used as subreflector to drastically reduce the number of elements to be controlled for applications requiring steering or reconfiguration [2] of the beam such as Synthetic Aperture Radar applications. These antenna configurations present a high applicability to SAR systems in which scanning with almost no degradation of the beam is of high importance to avoid performance degradation over the swath [3].