A Partially Reflecting Surface Antenna With a Non-Resonant Cavity and a Phase-Correcting Surface for Gain Enhancement

Partially reflecting surface (PRS) resonant antennas have attracted significant attention for the past two decades. However, how to improve their peak gain is still a challenge. This article proposes a nonresonant PRS antenna that does not require the conventional resonant condition that limits design flexibility and peak gain. It consists of a PRS, a ground, a small feed, and a transparent phase-correcting surface (PCS) placed above the PRS for phase compensation. The ray-tracing method is used to analyze the proposed nonresonant PRS antenna, and numerical simulations are conducted to verify its effectiveness. Our theoretical and numerical results show that the gain of a PRS antenna with a nonresonant cavity reaches its peak when the cavity height is between 0.6 lambda and 0.9 lambda. Three prototypes are fabricated and tested, and the measured results show that peak gains of over 25 dBi and 3 dB gain bandwidths of more than 10% can be achieved at the same time.