Design and analysis of printed reflectarrays with irregularly positioned array elements

The design and analysis of printed reflectarrays with irregularly positioned array elements is presented. An accurate and efficient power pattern synthesis procedure, based on the Local Periodicity approach (LP) and the minimax optimization algorithm has been implemented. The analysis accuracy of the LP approach for irregular reflectarrays is established by comparisons with full wave Method of Moments solutions. It is demonstrated that the LP approach is very accurate and can be used to analyze and optimize irregular reflectarrays. Two contoured beam reflectarrays, based on a regular and an irregular layout, generating the same contoured beam pattern to cover an European region with cross-polar and sidelobe suppression have been designed. Simulations show that better performance in the cross-polar radiation can be obtained by using the irregular reflectarray, thus demonstrating the potential of reflectarrays with irregularly positioned array elements.