Three-layer printed reflectarrays for contoured beam space applications

A procedure for designing contoured beam reflectarrays in a defined frequency band is proposed. The reflectarray consists of three layers of rectangular patch arrays backed by a ground plane. The phase of the reflection coefficient for both linear polarizations is controlled at each reflective element by adjusting the patch dimensions. To overcome the frequency band limitation of reflectarrays, the patch dimensions are adjusted to match the required phase distribution and its variation with frequency. A phase-only synthesis technique based on the intersection approach has been applied to obtain the phase distribution on the reflectarray surface. An experimental demonstration is presented by means of a medium-size two-layer reflectarray that radiates two pencil beams separated by 55°. An 80-cm three-layer reflectarray has been designed for typical South America DBS coverage at Ku-band for dual polarization. After the optimization of the patch dimensions to match the phase distribution in the 12.8-14.2 GHz band significant improvements have been achieved in the contoured patterns. As a result, the theoretical radiation patterns practically fulfill the requirements in the coverage region within a 10% bandwidth.