An investigation of reflectarray operation using its component current contributions

Reflectarray operation is described by examining the contributions of its different components (the conducting patches, groundplane and dielectric substrate) to its far- and near-fields. It is shown how the fields, computed from a very complete full-wave model using the high-frequency structure simulator HFSS, can be separately post-processed to find the appropriate currents (not routinely available from HFSS) on the individual reflectarray components. The far- and near-field contributions of these currents are then used to assess the role played by these individual components in the overall reflectarray operation.