Bandwidth enhancement of a miniaturized reflectarray antenna using sub‐wavelength meander‐line cells

We propose a new way to enlarge gain bandwidth of a miniaturized reflectarray antenna (MRA), a new type of reflectarray antenna (RA) with significantly reduced volume. To extend the gain bandwidth, we have used meander‐line based sub‐wavelength elements as reflectarray cells, which can fully cover a required reflection phase range ideally, 360°. As a result, we have accomplished a three times wider gain bandwidth than that of our previous MRAs. In addition, the proposed MRA can also provide high gain with good aperture efficiency even though a main beam directs toward a tilted direction. Furthermore, remarkably reduced electrical volume, which is 700 times smaller than the smallest conventional RAs, is still maintained. Measured aperture efficiency of the proposed MRA is 41.1% which is comparable with conventional RAs. And the measurement results show that the main lobe direction is very stable around the target direction within the given −1 dB gain bandwidth without any degradation in other performances. As a result, the proposed MRAs with wide gain bandwidth stands out as a good alternative of the conventional RAs.