A Double-Layer Highly Efficient and Wideband Transmitarray Antenna

Abstract

A double-layer highly efficient and wideband transmitarray antenna is presented. The transmitarray element is composed of four metal vias and two crosspatches with two stubs. The metal vias penetrate the entire substrate and arrange symmetrically. The crosspatches are printed on both sides of the dielectric substrate. The metal vias are introduced to enhance the coupling strength. The stubs are added to ensure a sufficient phase shift range. The achievable transmission magnitude is greater than −2 dB, and the phase shift range exceeds 360 • within the whole band. A transmitarray antenna using the proposed element was designed, manufactured, and measured. The simulation and measurement results are in good agreement. The measured maximum gain is 29.2 dBi at 18 GHz with the 51.4% aperture efficiency. The experimental results show that the proposed antenna has a 1-dB gain bandwidth of 9% (17.2-18.8 GHz). The proposed double-layer transmittarray antenna realizes the low-profile characteristic, simplifies the design complexity, and solves the problems of the mass and the cost.

Double-Layer 45° Linearly Polarized Wideband and Highly Efficient Transmitarray Antenna

“…Metal vias are used in double-layer TAs to expand the phase shift range and improve the transmission amplitude [15][16][17][18]. In [15], a double-layer TA element using modified Malta crosses with metal vias is presented.…”

“…Measurement results show that the proposed TA has a 1 dB gain bandwidth of 5.9% and an aperture efficiency of 40% at 20 GHz. Additional stubs are introduced in [16][17][18] to expand the phase shift range of TA element by using a double-layer structure. In [16][17], multiple types of elements are used to achieve sufficient phase shift range in TA design.…”

“…In [16], measurement results show that the TA has a 1 dB gain bandwidth of 9% and an aperture efficiency of 40% at 21 GHz. In [18], crosspatches with stubs and metal vias are used to design TA. Within the band, the magnitudes attenuate to −2 dB with the phase shift range exceeding 360°.…”

A wideband transmitarray using triple-layer elements with reduced profile

“…Many researchers have made efforts to improve the bandwidth performance of TA antennas. Using multilayer frequency-selective surface unit cells is a typical approach [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. In [1], a four-layer TA without dielectric substrate by using cross-slot unit cells is presented.…”

One-Dimensional Beam Scanning Transmitarray Lens Antenna Fed by Microstrip Linear Array

“…Both types of transmit array are composed of at least three layers of PCB which greatly increase the profile and computing resource when designing the high gain transmitarray antenna. Whereafter, double-layer structure with vias is proposed at K band to design efficient and wideband transmitarray antenna which employs only one tier of substrate and two-layer of metallic patches [9], [10], greatly lower the profile and fabrication expense compared with multi-layer transmitarray.…”