Millimetre wave reflectarray antenna unit cell measurements

Reflectarray antennas are a potential candidate solution to realize high gains at millimetre waves (mm-waves). A reflectarray contains a large number of spatially illuminated unit cells. The performance of a good reflectarray design is manifested by the behaviour of its comprising unit cells. An established technique to characterise a unit cell is by placing it inside a waveguide to achieve periodic boundary conditions. This usually requires custom waveguide products; making the tests difficult and expensive. Additionally, when the unit cells are reconfigurable as in a smart reflectarray it is hard to take the DC bias lines out of the waveguide without using custom made waveguide parts. This contribution address the issue of unit cell placement inside the waveguide and proposes simple unit cell structures to avoid custom made waveguide parts. The idea was verified by measuring a series of unit cells at mm-waves in various configurations and a practically acceptable agreement was found. The proposed structures greatly simplify the reconfigurable unit cell testing.