Design and Validation of Gathered Elements for Steerable-Beam Reflectarrays Based on Patches Aperture-Coupled to Delay Lines

The concept of grouping reflectarray elements made of patches aperture-coupled to delay lines is presented in this communication. The combination of two or four elements turning into a sub-array is presented as an effective way of reducing the number of control devices required to reconfigure a beam in reflectarray antennas, with the consequent reduction in cost and manufacturing complexity. It has been shown that the impact of the element-grouping on the antenna radiation patterns is very small, when compared with a reflectarray made of individual phasing elements. The concept has been validated by comparing the simulation results of phase-shift and losses with measurements in waveguide simulator for sub-arrays with two and four elements.