Design of a Triple-Band Shared-Aperture Antenna With High Figures of Merit

This communication develops a triple-band shared-aperture antenna operating at X/K/Ka-band with high figures of merit such as high aperture reuse efficiency and simple configuration to achieve high gain. The proposed antenna is implemented by integrating a Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity antenna operating at X-band into a dual-band reflectarray antenna enabled by frequency selective surfaces (FSSs). The unit cells (UCs) to form the phase-shifting surfaces for the dual-band reflectarray antenna can offer partial reflectance/transmission abilities at X-band simultaneously, thereby enabling the implementation of an FP cavity antenna. The frequency responses of the proposed antenna are highly independent at X/K/Ka-band, which facilitates the design and optimization. For demonstration, a prototype has been described, fabricated, and measured. The simulated results present 3 dB gain bandwidths of 11.2% (8.4-9.4 GHz), 10.0% (24-26.6 GHz), and 13.3% (35-40 GHz), which are all experimentally verified. The measured results also present a peak gain of 16.8 dBi at 9.0 GHz, 23.8 dBi at 26 GHz, and 26.7 dBi at 38 GHz.

Automated summary

This paper presents a triple-band shared-aperture antenna operating at X/K/Ka-band with high gain, achieved through integration of different technologies to ensure high efficiency. Experimental results validate the proposed approach and show significant gain improvements across different frequency bands.