Reconfigurable Reflectarray With Switchable Frequency and Beam Scanning Using Reduced Control Channel

This article proposes a novel high-gain reconfigurable reflectarray (RRA) with frequency-switchable capability and reduced control channels. A novel multiresonant unit cell design is proposed, incorporating a unique arrangement for the dual cell set (DCS) based on the characteristics of resonator-type unit cell design. By treating two neighboring unit cells as a DCS, this approach enables both frequency switching with control channel reduction and beam scanning. New cell distribution with reduced control channels for frequency switch and beam scanning is developed based on the DCS. The practicality of the proposed design is demonstrated through the fabrication and testing of a 15× 15 RRA with a single PIN diode in each unit cell. The 2-D beam scanning with frequency switching is experimentally demonstrated in three frequency bands, including 8.8-10.3 GHz, 10.3-11.8 GHz, and 11.6-12.8 GHz. With the proposed frequency switching technique, the RRA achieves a high aperture efficiency (AE) of 37.58% and a peak gain of 20.04 dBi at 9.1 GHz, and the resulting 3-dB bandwidth, including the working band from 8.9 to 12.8 GHz, reaches 37.04%.