Slot elements for tunable reflectarray antenna design

This paper presents a thorough analysis of different configurations of reflectarray resonant elements that can be used for the design of passive and tunable reconfigurable reflectarrays in the X-band frequency range. Reflection loss and bandwidth performance of these reflectarray elements have been highlighted based on Finite Element Method (FEM) and Finite Integral Method (FIM) techniques and the results have been verified by the waveguide scattering parameter measurements. The results demonstrate a reduction of 11% in the phase errors offering an increased static linear phase range of 353" which shows a feasibility of improving bandwidth performance of reflectarray antenna. Moreover a maximum dynamic phase range of 320" and a volume reduction of up to 22.15% have also been demonstrated for reflectarray elements with circular slots at 10GHz.