Comparison between the "Infinite Array "Approach and the "Surrounded-Element" Approach for the Simulation of Reflectarray Antennas

This paper presents a new approach to analyse reflectarray cells. It permits to realistically account for mutual coupling effects by simulating each radiating cell with its actual neighbouring cells, either identical or not. The proposed approach is compared to a more conventional approach that considers an infinite periodic environment. A comparison between reflectarray measurements and simulations leads to a good agreement using the proposed approach