A Novel 1 Bit Wide-Angle Beam Scanning Reconfigurable Transmitarray Antenna Using an Equivalent Magnetic Dipole Element

A novel 1 bit reconfigurable transmitarray antenna (RTA) using an equivalent magnetic dipole element for wide-angle beam scanning at Ku-band is presented. The RTA element consists of a rectangular patch and a side-shorted patch with an equivalent magnetic dipole radiation. A 1 bit phase difference is achieved by controlling two p-i-n diodes on the side-shorted patch based on the current reversal mechanism. The half-power beamwidth of the presented antenna element is 142 degrees in E-plane, which is significantly larger than other conventional elements. A RTA prototype with 16 x 16 elements is designed, fabricated, and tested. The measured results show good beam scanning capabilities of the 1 bit RTA. The measured gain in the broadside direction is 21.4 dBi, and the scan gain loss is 3.6 dB for the 60 degrees scanned beam in E-plane.