Communication A Novel Systematic Design of High-Aperture-Efficiency 2D Beam-Scanning Liquid-Crystal Embedded Reflectarray Antenna for 6G FR3 and Radar Applications

Abstract

This communication presents a novel systematic design of a high-aperture-efficiency and 2-D beam-scanning nematic liquid-crystal (LC)-based reflectarray (LCRA) that operates in the sixth-generation (6G) midband (7–24 GHz). Despite a 260° phase range, the maximum aperture efficiency is 35.8% at an aperture dimension (F/D) ratio of 0.58, the highest aperture efficiency at the lowest F/D ratio among LCRAs designed to operate on the mmWave band. The proposed LC-based reflectarray unit cell (LC-RUC) has significantly low reflection loss compared to other LC-RUCs. Also, the bias topology of the proposed LC-RUC makes the LCRA capable of 2-D beam scanning. The beam-scanning range of the proposed LCRA is ±50° on the xoz plane and 0°–65° in the yoz plane at 9.55 GHz. A <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2 \times 2 $ </tex-math></inline-formula> patch array antenna is designed as the feed antenna to achieve a small F/D ratio system and ease of optimization. When designing the feed antenna, the number of elements or the element spacing is considered to achieve high feed efficiency. In addition, the fabricated planar feed antenna can be easily integrated with a 3-D printed jig in which the focal length can be adjusted for optimization. The lowest side lobe level (SLL) of the proposed LCRA is −15.5 dB.