Design of a 2-bit Unit-Cell for Electronically Reconfigurable Transmitarrays at Ka-band

Fatimata Diaby (1, 2) , Antonio Clemente (1, 2) , Luca Di Palma (1, 2) , Laurent Dussopt (1, 2) , Kien Pham (3) , Erwan Fourn (3) , Ronan Sauleau (3)

1 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
2 UGA [2016-2019] - Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019]
3 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique

This paper presents in detail the design of a linearly-polarized electronically reconfigurable unit-cell for transmitarray antennas with a 2-bit phase resolution in Ka-band. The size of the proposed unit-cell is 5.1x5.1x1.3 mm(3). It is implemented on a dielectric stack-up composed of six metal layers, three dielectric substrates and two bonding films. The radiating elements are printed on both external metallic layers and are loaded by two PIN diodes controlling the transmission phase. This unit-cell is used to design a 196-element transmitarray with 784 PIN diodes. The performance of this 2-bit transmitarray has been evaluated numerically using our in-house simulation tool and compared to a transmitarray with a 1-bit phase quantization. A maximum gain of 22.9 dBi, an aperture efficiency of 32.3%, and a side-lobe level equal to -18.1 dB at broadside have been obtained at 29 GHz.

Mots clés: Electronically reconfigurable unit-cell; Transmitarray; discrete lens; flat lens arrays; reconfigurable antenna; phase quantization; linear polarization; 5G antennas

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]; Electronique

Fatimata Diaby, Antonio Clemente, Luca Di Palma, Laurent Dussopt, Kien Pham, et al.. Design of a 2-bit Unit-Cell for Electronically Reconfigurable Transmitarrays at Ka-band. 14th European Radar Conference (EURAD), Oct 2017, Nuremberg, Germany. ⟨hal-01806923⟩