New Technique to Design Fresnel Zone Plate Antennas

A new method to design Fresnel Zone Plate Antennas (FZPA) is presented in this paper. The proposed method is based on deforming a flat metallic surface in order to achieve the desired phase distribution required to point the main beam to a certain direction. The resulting shaped reflector is modeled by using parametric surfaces, since they allow fitting the real shape of the antenna accurately providing smooth variations. Therefore, the diffraction effect that appears in the transition region between Fresnel zones can be reduced. Unlike bulky parabolic reflectors, FZPAs are much smaller and easy to transport and support, being a promising candidate for satellite communication applications due to its high gain, high polarization purity and minimum volume.