Beam Scanning Transmitarray Employing Reconfigurable Dual-Layer Huygens Element

A Ku-band electronic 2-dimensional (2-D) beam-scanning transmitarray employing a new reconfigurable dual-layer Huygens element is developed in this article. The Huygens element consists of two metallic crosses printed on two layers of a dielectric substrate, which enables a near nonreflection Huygens resonance. A 1 bit phase compensation with low transmission loss is realized by controlling two p-i-n diodes on the element. Compared with many other reconfigurable transmitarray elements using multilayer structures with metallic vias, the proposed reconfigurable Huygens element has a much simpler configuration with a simpler biasing network, and it is not affected by multilayer alignment errors. This particularly facilitates large aperture array development at higher frequencies. To validate the design concept, an electronically reconfigurable transmitarray with the proposed element is fabricated at 13 GHz. Good agreement between the measured and simulated results is found, showing 2-D scanning beams within +/- 50 degrees in the E-plane and +/- 40 degrees in the H-plane with a maximum realized gain of 18.4 dBi.

Automated summary

This article presents the development of a Ku-band electronic 2-D beam-scanning transmitarray using a new reconfigurable dual-layer Huygens element. The proposed element, consisting of two metallic crosses printed on two layers of a dielectric substrate, enables a near nonreflection Huygens resonance. A 1 bit phase compensation with low transmission loss is achieved by controlling two p-i-n diodes on the element. Compared to other reconfigurable transmitarray elements, the proposed Huygens element has a simpler configuration and biasing network, and is not affected by multilayer alignment errors.