Low-Profile High-Efficiency Transmitarray Antenna for Beamforming Applications

Abstract

A low-profile high-efficiency transmitarray antenna (TA) for beamforming applications is proposed and investigated in this paper. The partial H-plane waveguide slot array antenna is employed as the compact low-profile feeding structure of the beamforming TA. The designed TA can achieve a high taper efficiency due to the multi-array sources and the compactness of the partial H-plane waveguide. Moreover, the proposed TA can inherently have a high spillover efficiency because the frequency selective surface (FSS) for beamforming is located just above the radiating slot. The FSS with a transmission phase variation of 2π is designed by a square patch array and used to manipulate the wave-front of the transmitted electromagnetic wave instead of a complicated feed network and phase shifters. To verify its beamforming characteristic, three types of FSSs to operate a forming angle of −40°, −20°, 0°, +20°, and +40° are designed at 12 GHz. The distance between the FSS and the slot array antenna is 0.1λ0, and the aperture efficiency is measured to be about 69%. The measured results, such as the reflection coefficient and the far-field radiation pattern, are in good agreement with the simulated results. From the measured results, the proposed TA is confirmed to have good beamforming characteristics and high aperture efficiency.