Design of printed reflectarray with wide beam scanning angle

In recent years, high-gain low-profile antennas with wide angle of beam scanning are required for high-speed wireless communications. Traditionally, parabolic reflector antennas with mechanical scanning or planar microstrip patch array with electronic beam scanning are employed. However, parabolic reflector antennas with mechanical scanning are large and heavy while the planar microstrip patch array with electronic beam scanning has high power loss of the complicated feeding network. Novel designs of antenna element were proposed, and five reflectarray antennas with different beam angle using the antenna element as the unit cell were proposed as well. The simulated results of the unit cell and array antennas show that 60 degree scanning angle within 4% bandwidth is achieved successfully, which demonstrates the presented design is practicable.