Circularly Polarized One-Bit Reconfigurable ME-Dipole Reflectarray at X-Band

In this letter, a broadband and low loss circularly polarized (CP) electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antenna (RRA) that can operate over the X-band is reported. The proposed RRA invokes a new reconfigurable magneto-electric (ME) dipole based element for dynamically manipulating the phase of the back-scattered CP wave from each pixel, and hence, the direction of the reflected beam. The engineered wideband ME-dipole element and the design of a low loss reconfigurable perturbation structure contribute jointly to a superior CP bandwidth as well as a high efficiency. A reflectarray prototype with two-dimensional (2-D) beam scanning is designed, fabricated, and measured, demonstrating a wide-angle beam scanning capability. Besides, notable advances in bandwidth and aperture efficiency of the 1-bit CP RRA are identified, over the previous state of the art.