Broadband, Single-Layer Dual Circularly Polarized Reflectarrays With Linearly Polarized Feed

Abstract

A broadband single layer, dual circularly polarized (CP) reflectarrays with linearly polarized feed is introduced in this paper. To reduce the electrical interference between the two orthogonal polarizations of the CP element, a novel subwavelength multiresonance element with a Jerusalem cross and an open loop is proposed, which presents a broader bandwidth and phase range excessing 360° simultaneously. By tuning the $x$ - and $y$ -axis dimensions of the proposed element, an optimization technique is used to minimize the phase errors on both orthogonal components. Then, a single-layer offset-fed $20 \times 20$ -element dual-CP reflectarray has been designed and fabricated. The measured results show that the 1-dB gain and 3-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidths of the dual-CP reflectarray can reach 12.5% and 50%, respectively, which shows a significant improvement in gain and AR bandwidths as compared to reflectarrays with conventional $\lambda $ /2 cross-dipole elements.