Design and Validation of a Reconfigurable Single Varactor-Tuned Reflectarray

Frequency Agile Radial-Shaped Varactor-Loaded Reflectarray Cell

“…By applying a tunable reverse DC voltage across the varicap, the diode capacitance can be properly tuned in order to actively adjust the reflection phase of the single element, thus providing a dynamic control of the backscattering features relative to the elementary cell. This latter has been experimentally validated in [13], by demonstrating good beam steering as well as pattern reshaping capabilities. The above configuration has been further modified in [14], to improve the unit cell frequency performances in terms of frequency agility.…”

“…1. Both elements have been designed and proposed by the authors in some previous papers [13], [14]. In particular, the configuration depicted in Fig.…”

“…A promising and versatile reconfigurable reflectarray cell has been proposed by the authors in [10][11][12][13]. It consists of a rectangular patch aperture-coupled to a uniform microstrip line loaded by a single varactor/varicap diode.…”

“…The above configuration has been further modified in [14], to improve the unit cell frequency performances in terms of frequency agility. In particular, by adopting a couple of radial lines to replace the linear stubs used in [13], the unit cell operational bandwidth (i.e. the frequency range within which it is possible to effectively tune the unit cell reflection phase in a quite full phase-range) is roughly tripled, thus achieving a good degree of frequency agility.…”

“…In this paper, an equivalent circuit-model approach is adopted to analyze the wider band behavior of the radial phasing line configuration [14] with respect to the linear one [13]. The adopted analysis method is fruitfully implemented to perform a fast and preliminary investigation on the improvements provided by the radial shaped varactor loaded phasing line in terms of reflectarray unit cell frequency agility.…”