High-gain Transmitarray Antenna for Backhauling at D-band

This paper presents the design, simulation and prototyping of a 2-bit dual linearly-polarized transmitarray antenna (TA) for 5G millimeter-wave point-to-point backhauling radio links at D-band (130 - 174.8 GHz). The flat lens consists of a square array with 1600 unit cells arranged on a 40x40 element regular grid. This array is based on a printed circuit board structure with only three metal layers and no via connection in order to minimize the insertion loss, the fabrication complexity and the overall cost of the system. The full-array has been optimized using array theory; these results are compared to full-wave simulations performed with Ansys HFSS. The 1-dB and 3-dB gain bandwidth equal 11.9% and 19.7% respectively, with a peak gain of 34.1 dBi and aperture efficiency of 51% at the center frequency. The unit cell configuration is fully symmetric to operate in dual polarization operation.