Tunable liquid crystal reflectarray with rectangular elements

Author

Bildik, Saygin ; Fritzsch, Carsten ; Moessinger, Alexander ; Jakoby, Rolf

Author_Institution

Microwave Eng., Tech. Univ. Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

fYear

2010

fDate

15-17 March 2010

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

A square and a rectangular microstrip patch element are designed and investigated in order to realize an electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antenna based on liquid crystals at Ka-Band. By using an equivalent circuit composed of lumped elements, reflection coefficient amplitudes, tunable phase ranges and losses of the designed elements are compared. As a result of the investigation, since the rectangular element has higher reflection amplitude, a tunable liquid crystal reflectarray antenna composed of rectangular elements is realized. The fabricated antenna has the ability of beam steering in one dimension. Tuning capability of the reflectarray antenna is presented by scanning the main beam from -20° to +20°.

Keywords

beam steering; equivalent circuits; lumped parameter networks; microstrip antenna arrays; reflector antennas; Ka-band; beam steering; electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antenna; equivalent circuit; fabricated antenna; lumped element; rectangular microstrip patch element; reflection coefficient amplitude; square microstrip patch element; tunable liquid crystal reflectarray antenna; tunable phase range; tuning capability; Equivalent circuits; Liquid crystals; Microstrip antennas; Optical reflection; Permittivity; Reflector antennas; Semiconductor diodes; Substrates; Tunable circuits and devices; Tuning;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Conference, 2010 German

Conference_Location

Berlin

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4933-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-3-9812668-1-8

Type

conf

Filename

5498264