Design of large mm-wave beam-scanning reflectarrays

Beam scanning reflectarrays represent an attractive alternative to MMIC-based phased array antennas, particularly at mm-wave frequencies, thanks to their potential low costs and high performance. In this paper a simple but effective reconfigurable reflecting element is presented and the design procedure is described. An architecture for 2-D electronic beam steering with reduced number of control signals, suitable for large reflectarray antennas, is presented. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution a prototypal reflectarray antenna operating at 25 GHz has been designed and fabricated. Comparison with measured results shows very good agreement and confirms the capability to electronically steer the antenna beam