W-band beam-steerable MEMS-based reflectarray

Abstract

This paper presents recent advances on reconfigurable reflectarrays at the University of Perugia. In particular, the activities carried out in the framework of the FP7 project ARASCOM (“MEMS and Liquid Crystal based” Agile Reflectarray Antennas for Security and COMmunication). As for ARASCOM outcomes, the purpose of the project is the design of a very large reconfigurable reflectarray controlled with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) for mm-wave imaging system at 76.5 GHz. A system with sufficient resolution to detect concealed weapons impose challenging requirements on the antenna, which shall be made of hundreds of thousands elements. The problem has been addressed by exploiting some innovative solutions and architectures that will be described in this document. In particular, the dimensioning of the reflectarray, the proposed 1-bit geometry of elementary cell, and the innovative biasing control architecture are reported together with the MEMS design and fabrication and the experimental results of a demonstrating board that validated the adopted procedure.