An interpolation/perturbation approach for the modeling of reflectarray elements

This paper presents a novel method for the element characterization of printed reflectarray antennas, which requires the calculation of the phase of the reflection coefficient versus the patch dimension (phase diagram). It is based on the full-wave analysis of the structure in a limited number of points, and a polynomial interpolation of the phase, which takes advantage of a perturbation technique for estimating the phase derivative. This approach significantly reduces the computing time for the calculation of the phase diagram.