Hybrid phase compensation method for ultrathin folded transmitarray antenna

Abstract

The folded transmitarray antenna (FTA) attracts a lot of attention for its low-profile, high gain beam as well as easy fabrication. By adding a reflector to conventional transmitarray antenna (TA), multi-folded reflection is obtained and the profile between the feed and transmitarray is reduced to about 1/3 compared with that of TA, while it does not satisfy the requirement of integration property for modern communication systems. In this work, to further reduce the profile of FTA and keep the optimal focus-to-diameter ratio, a general strategy is firstly proposed by hybridizing the reflection and transmission phase compensation for the FTA design. Owing to the extra reflection phase compensation, the FTA’s profile can be further reduced and can be set arbitrarily. As an example, an ultrathin FTA with a profile reduction to 1/4.2 is designed based on the proposed method, and another two conventional FTAs are used for comparison. The simulation and test results indicate that the hybrid design method provides an effective strategy to improve the compactness of antenna system.