volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

This paper presents a design of a right hand circularly polarized x-band reflectarray antenna (RA) at a center frequency 12 GHz. The reflectarray is fed by a linearly polarized dipole antenna. The proposed reflectarray antenna can be used for CubeSat applications. The reflecting elements have the shape of a pentagon. This shape is chosen to convert the incident linearly polarized fields to the required circular polarization. A dipole antenna is used as linearly polarized (LP) feeding element for the proposed reflectarray. This dipole antenna is tilted w.r.t the x-axis by an angle 45˚ to introduce nearly equal polarizations in x and y directions on the aperture of the reflectarray. Each reflecting element is adjusted to produce a phase shift 90˚ between the reflection coefficients in x and y directions. The required reflected phase is realized by adjusting a scaling factor (SF) for the pentagonal patch in x direction to the corresponding SF in y axis. This phase difference is responsible for polarization conversion of the incident plane wave into circularly polarized reflected wave. The reflectarray is designed with focal to-diameter (F/D) ratio equals unity. In this work, an efficient technique is discussed for modelling the reflectarray designed. This technique is based on developing a Visual Basic Script file for allocating the reflecting elements with their corresponding dimensions in their location on the simulation tool. This script file is used directly by the simulation tool (HFSS) to draw the complete model automatically. This procedure has a significant role on simplifying the modeling of complicated structure like the proposed reflectarray. The proposed reflectarray antenna is simulated at 12 GHz. The obtained axial ratio (AR) is found to be 2.1 dB, and peak gain is 18 dBi. The antenna is also fabricated and measured for verification.

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Dr. Shimaa Ahmed Megahed Soliman

Prof. Ahmed Attiya

Professor Yahia M. Antar