Investigations into unit cells offering an increased phasing range for single-layer printed reflectarrays

This paper reports on the investigations into new configurations of unit cells which offer an increased phasing range for a single-layer printed reflectarray. It is shown that the extended phasing range can be obtained by utilizing similar in shape but different in size resonant elements. Using this principle it is shown that two resonant elements forming a unit cell can double while three elements can almost triple the phasing range of a single resonant element unit cell. These investigations also show that the relative sizes and spacing between the elements in the cell can be adjusted to linearize the phasing curves as a function of the elements dimensions. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.