A Beam Reconfigurable Bidirectional Reflection/Transmission Array Antenna

In this paper, we propose a 1-bit reconfigurable bidirectional transmission/reflection array (TRA) antenna. The TRA adopts a two-layer compact unit structure to achieve transmission and reflection modes simultaneously. Two PIN diodes have been applied to the unit to complement 1-bit quantification for beam scanning. Then a reconfigurable array antenna composed of 14×14 elements is designed, manufactured, and measured at 9.2GHz. The peak gain of transmission and reflection reaches 17.41dBi and 16.74dBi, respectively, when the beam scans within the range of ±60°. The aperture efficiency of 10.57% in transmission and 9.06% in reflection have been attained. Based on this, a 1-bit reconfigurable bidirectional dual-beam TRA has been attempted with the same unit. The phase synthesis method is utilized in dual-beam TRA designing. The transmission and reflection peak gain for symmetrical dual-beam of equal amplitude reaches 13.64 dBi and 12.63 dBi respectively, with a scanning angle of ±10° and 13.86 dBi and 13.01 dBi when the scanning angle is ±20°. The results demonstrate that the above designs have potential applications in communication and multi-target radar systems.