Analysis and Optimization of the Scanning

Performance of 1-bit Reconfigurable Reflectarrays

Huanhuan Yang1, Yilin Mao2, Shenheng Xu1, Fan Yang1,2, Atef. Z. Elsherbeni3
1 2 3
Electronic Engineering Department Electrical Engineering and Computer
Electrical Engineering Department
Tsinghua University University of Mississippi Science Department
Beijing, China MS, USA Colorado School of Mines
Golden, CO, USA
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—This paper investigates the beam-scanning II. OPTIMIZATION OF ELEMENT COMPENSATION PHASES IN
performance of 1-bit reconfigurable reflectarray antennas (RRA) A 1-BIT RRA DESIGN
implemented with PIN diodes. It is found that the performance
deterioration resulted from 1-bit quantization can be alleviated The key to design of a reflectarray antenna is the selection
by the optimization of the compensation phases. Furthermore, of compensation phase for each element. The required phase
the performance of three RRAs with different aperture sizes are for the mnth element is calculated as
analyzed, and the results show that with the increase of aperture
size, both the beam point error and peak sidelobe level decrease, ( ̂ ⃗ )
while the quantization loss increases slowly.
where k is the free space wavenumber, is the spatial
I. INTRODUCTION distance between feed and the mnth element, ̂ is the unit
vector in the main beam direction, ⃗ is the position vector of
Microstrip reflectarray antennas, combining the advantages the mnth element and is a constant reference phase. For a 1-
of both traditional parabolic reflectors and phased arrays, have
bit design, there are only two phase options, and with
aroused great interest in the fields of satellite communications,
phase difference of 180o. The elements need to be divided into
radars and commercial usages [1]. Similar to phased array
antennas, reconfigurable reflectarray antennas (RRA) achieve two groups, one with phase and the other one with . The
beam-scanning capabilities by the means of dynamic phase dividing criteria depends on two boundary values and
control of each element [2, 3]. Moreover, the spatial feed of whose difference is normally 180o as well. Elements whose
RRA can improve the efficiency and reduce the cost are within [ ] will be classified to the group,
remarkably compared with phased arrays, which require while others go to the group. Therefore, as the reference
complex feeding network and expensive transmit/receive (T/R) phase varies, changes, resulting in different division.
modules [4].
In order to obtain the optimal performance for all scan
The phase control of each element in a RRA is usually angles, for each scan angle should be carefully chosen to
accomplished by using discrete devices or tunable minimize QL, which is defined as
electromagnetics materials. Considering the reliability and
availability of the components, the former is usually preferred,
which could be generally classified into two categories: analog where is the gain of the ideal case in which the
and digital, such as varactor diodes and PIN diodes. The analog compensation phase of each element is exactly the same as the
designs often suffer from high dissipative losses and required one and is the one with 1-bit design.
operational instability, whereas the digital ones can obtain
reliable phase tuning due to their repeatable on/off nature [5]. An example of a 1-bit RRA with 10 × 10 elements is
The effect of the elementary phase quantization on the designed to illustrate the effect of . The element spacing is
scanning performance of reflectarray has been demonstrated in at 12.5 GHz and the feeding horn is located at (-51.3 mm,
[5] and it results in a tradeoff between the quantization loss 0, 110 mm). Nine progressive scanning angles are studied,
(QL) and system complexity. covering from 0o to 40o off broadside at a step of 5o. The gains
In this paper, designs of 1-bit RRAs with different aperture obtained at different angles when being 0o are compared
sizes are proposed. The optimization of the element with the ideal case in Fig. 1(a). It is observed that this 1-bit
compensation phases is studied. Furthermore, the influence of quantization causes an average reduction of 3.03dB in gain,
aperture size is investigated. Numerical results are presented to and particularly at 40o the QL is more than 4.5dB. In order to
validate the conclusion. enhance the performance, is optimized at each angle. For
example, it is chosen to be 150o and 75o for the cases of 0o and
40o, respectively, and the optimization results are also
illustrated in Fig.1 (a) for comparison. It can be seen that the
average value of QL decreases to 2.23dB, while particularly it

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is reduced to 2.83dB at 40o. It also works well on the SLL. As TABLE I. COMPARISON OF SCANNING PERFORMANCE.
demonstrated in Fig. 1(b), the SLL is maintained below −10 dB
even for the case of scanning angle being 40o while Aperture Size BPEave SLLmax (dB)
comparatively the SLL reached -7.13 dB in the previous case. 10×10 1.28 o
-10.98
Therefore, proper selection of yields much better radiation 20×20 0.36o -14.57
performance. Finally, it is noted that due to the phase o
quantization, beam point error (BPE) is observed. For example, 30×30 0.06 -15.54
BPE is 2.5o for the scanning angle of 0o value and the average
value for all of the nine cases is 1.28o.
The effect of aperture size is also investigated in terms of
gain reduction. As illustrated in Fig.3, QL verses scan angles
are compared for different aperture sizes. It is observed that as
the scanning angle increases, the QL becomes larger.
Furthermore, QL also increases as the aperture size increases.

4
10×10 elements
20×20 elements
3.5
30×30 elements

QL (dB)
(a) (b)
2.5
Fig. 1. Results of a 10×10 elements RA: (a) comparison of
gain vs. scan angle for three different designs (b) normalized 2
radiation patterns for the design with optimized Δφ
1.5
III. EFFECT OF APERTURE SIZE ON SCANNING 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Scan angle θ (deg)
PERFORMANCE 0

Based on the aforementioned optimization, another two Fig. 3. Quantization Loss (QL) vs. scan angles
1-bit RRAs with 20×20 and 30×30 elements, respectively,
are also designed. Limited by the paper length, only the results IV. CONCLUSION
of 30×30 design are shown in Fig. 2. It is interesting to note Three 1-bit RRAs with different aperture sizes are studied
that the influence of becomes smaller as the aperture size in this paper. The scanning performance for each design is
increases. firstly improved by the optimization of the element
compensation phases. Then, the impact of aperture size is
investigated. The simulation results show that as the aperture
size becomes larger, the BPE and SLL are less affected by the
phase quantization; while the QL increases.
REFERENCES

[1] J. Huang and J. A. Encinar, Reflecetarray Antennas, John Wiley &Sons

Inc., 2008.
[2] P. Nayeri, F. Yang, and A. Z. Elsherbeni, “Bifocal design and aperture
phase optimizations of reflectarray antennas for wide-angle beam
(a) (b) scanning performance,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 61, no. 9,
pp. 4588–4597, Sep. 2013.
Fig. 2. Results of a 30×30 elements RA: (a) comparison of
[3] M. Riel, J. J. Laurin, “Design of an electronially beam scanning
gain vs. scan angle for three different designs (b) normalized reflectarray using aperture-coupled elements,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
radiation patterns for the design with optimized Δφ Propagat., vol. 55, no. 5, pp. 1260–1266, May 2007.
To make a comparison of the radiation patterns of those [4] R. J. Mailloux, Phased Array Antenna Handbook, 2nd Ed., Artech House,
2005.
three reflectarrays with different sizes, some key parameters
[5] B. Wu, A. Sutinjo, M. E. Potter, and M. Okoniewski, “On the selection
over the scan range, namely the average BPE and the of the number of bits to control a dynamic digital MEMS reflectarray,”
maximum SLL, are summarized in Table I. It shows that when IEEE Antennas Wireless Propagat. Lett., vol. 7, pp. 183–186, 2008.
the aperture size increases, the BPE becomes much
imperceptible; meanwhile, the SLL is improved too.

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