2246 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO.
6, JUNE 2016
A 1-Bit 10 × 10 Reconfigurable Reflectarray
Antenna: Design, Optimization, and Experiment
Huanhuan Yang, Student Member, IEEE, Fan Yang, Senior Member, IEEE, Shenheng Xu, Member, IEEE,
Yilin Mao, Maokun Li, Member, IEEE, Xiangyu Cao, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jun Gao
Abstract—An electronically reconfigurable reflectarray antenna
(RRA) with 10 × 10 elements is presented with a detailed design
procedure for an improved beam-scanning performance. The ele-
ment, designed at Ku band using a simple patch structure with
one PIN diode and two substrate layers, can be electronically con-
trolled to generate two states with 180◦ phase difference and low
reflection loss. A reflectarray prototype is fabricated and exper-
imentally studied for proof of principle. The limitations of the
small aperture size are analyzed in detail, and synthetic optimiza-
tions of both feed location and aperture phase distribution are
used to improve the beam-scanning performance of the prototype.
Experimental results agree well with the full-wave simulations,
and scan beams within ±50◦ range are obtained with a maximum
aperture efficiency of 17.9% at 12.5 GHz. Consistent scan beams
are obtained from 11.75 to 13.25 GHz. Furthermore, the versa-
tile beam-forming capability of the RRA is also demonstrated by a
wide-beam pattern synthesis. A fast beam-switching time (12 µs)
is theoretically analyzed and verified by the measurement.
Index Terms—Antenna, beam-forming, microstrip array, PIN
diode, reconfigurable, reflectarray.
I. I NTRODUCTION
R ECONFIGURABLE reflectarray antennas (RRAs) based
on electronically tunable techniques have attracted great
interest in recent years [1]–[3]. Compared to phased arrays,
RRA elements are typically integrated with tunable devices,
such as electronic switches, varactor diodes, or tunable materi-
als, which are able to achieve electronically phase control with-
out using additional phase shifters or expensive transmit/receive
(T/R) modules. Moreover, the spatial feeding mechanism of
RRA avoids large loss caused by bulky feeding networks, espe-
cially at millimeter-wave frequencies. Hence, RRAs are able
Manuscript received June 25, 2015; revised March 17, 2016; accepted March
20, 2016. Date of publication April 07, 2016; date of current version May 30,
2016. This work was supported in part by the Tsinghua National Laboratory
for Information Science and Technology (TNList) and in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61271100 Grant 61471389.
H. Yang is with the School of Information and Navigation, Air Force
Engineering University, Xi’an 710051, China, and also with the Department of
Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail:
jianye8901@126.com).
F. Yang, S. Xu, and M. Li are with the Department of Electronic Engineering,
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: fan_yang@tsinghua.
edu.cn).
Y. Mao was with the Department of Electrical Engineering, the University of
Mississippi, Oxford MS 38677 USA.
X. Cao and J. Gao are with the School of Information and Navigation, Air
Force Engineering University, Xi’an 710051, China (e-mail: xiangyucaokdy@
163.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2016.2550178
0018-926X © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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to provide versatile radiation performance and high efficiency
with low profile, light weight, less system complexity, and
low cost. Therefore, they have emerged as a promising cost-
effective alternative to phased arrays in various applications.
Several reconfigurable techniques for RRA element designs
have been proposed in literature and summarized in [2].
Lumped devices and tunable materials are widely used. In
[4] and [5], PIN diodes were used in designing 1-bit or 2-
bit RRA elements, respectively. Since PIN diodes work just
as RF-switches, the implemented elements can only provide
discrete reflection-phase states. To obtain continuous control-
lable phases, varactor diodes have been employed in elements
designs. In [6] and [7], nearly 360◦ phase range was obtained
by loading one varactor diode between patch and ground. In
[8], the patch with two center-loaded varactors showed tun-
able phase range of 325◦ . Moreover, varactors have also been
inserted in the delay lines of aperture-coupled elements to
obtain linear phase response [9]–[11]. Recently, RF-MEMS
technology has been applied in digital [12]–[14] or analog [15]
RRA elements with distinct advantages of low loss and nearly
zero dc power consumption. At millimeter and sub-millimeter
wavelength, tunable materials such as liquid crystal [16]–[18]
and graphene [19] have also been proposed to design RRA
elements.
Regarding practically fabricated arrays, however, there are
only limited number of publications due to the system com-
plexity and cost. In [20], an RRA with 244 elements using
PIN diodes was designed to switch the beam among three fixed
pointing directions (−5◦ , 0◦ , 5◦ ). In [21], an RRA with 10 × 10
elements was designed to switch between beams pointing at 0◦
or 40◦ . To obtain continuous scanning beams, RRAs based on
varactor-loaded elements were developed [6], [22]–[25]. For
example, beam scanning from broadside to 40◦ in H-plane
was obtained with RRA containing 5 × 6 elements in [23].
References [26] and [27] demonstrated RRAs with 16 × 16 ele-
ments at millimeter-wave frequencies using liquid crystal as the
substrate. In [28] and [29], RRAs with 25 600 and 5250 ele-
ments, respectively, were designed, fabricated, and measured.
Compared with analogy designs, RRAs with digital elements
are preferred in practical implementations due to the easier dc
control. In [29]–[32], the influences of phase discretization on
the radiation performance of RRA were investigated. It sug-
gests that 1-bit RRAs are feasible to steer the beam owing
to the quadratic irradiation from the spatial feeding [28]–[30].
They are preferable to implement especially in large aper-
ture designs due to the reduced number of electronic devices,
simplified biasing structure, stable phase states, and low cost.
YANG et al.: 1-BIT 10 × 10 RRA: DESIGN, OPTIMIZATION, AND EXPERIMENT 2247

Unfortunately, the highly quantized phase distribution will

degrade the beam-scanning performance. RRAs with large scan
range and high aperture efficiency are still very challenging.
Hence, the optimization and experimental verification of the
performance of 1-bit RRAs are of increasing interest.
In this paper, a comprehensive investigation of a Ku-band 1-
bit RRA is presented on the basis of our previous work [32],
[33], and the goal is to optimize the beam-scanning perfor-
mance of a practical RRA design. The 10 × 10 RRA using a
simple RRA element is designed and carefully elaborated for
proof-of-principle for satellite communications. A prototype is
fabricated and thoroughly investigated through measurements.
Specifically, Section II describes the design and prototype of
the RRA element and system. In Section III, the optimization
and measurements of the designed RRA are presented. The feed
location is properly chosen, and the compensation phase is opti-
mized to improve the gains and scanning beams. The bandwidth
performance is investigated, as well as the loss budget and
the specular reflection effect. Furthermore, a wide-beam pat-
tern synthesis using genetic algorithm (GA) is carried out. The
beam-switching time is also computed and measured. Finally,
Section IV concludes this work.

II. D ESIGN AND P ROTOTYPE

A. 1-Bit RRA Element
The configuration of the proposed 1-bit RRA element is
shown in Fig. 1(a) and (b). The tunable resonator approach [2]
is adopted to control the reflection. The microstrip patch acts
as a scatterer when being illuminated by an incoming wave.
The PIN diode connecting the patch to the ground plane alters Fig. 1. 1-bit RRA element. (a) Perspective view. (b) Side view. (c) Simulated
reflection magnitude and phase.
the resonant property when it is turned ON or OFF according
to the dc-biasing voltage, resulting in a 180◦ phase difference. TABLE I
The biasing mechanism is deliberately designed to minimize E QUIVALENT C IRCUIT PARAMETERS OF THE PIN D IODE
the biasing circuit loss and simplify the structure. The biasing
point is positioned at the zero-electric-field point along the non-
radiating edge of the patch. Furthermore, an open-ended radial
stub and a quarter-wavelength microstrip line are designed to
choke the RF signal. These approaches ensure good isolation of
dc and RF performance, and reduce the additional loss resulted
from the biasing network, which usually occurs in the reconfig- aimed frequency band. The simulated reflection magnitude and
urable reflectarray elements. Moreover, the radial stub is placed phase using HFSS are plotted in Fig. 1(c). It is clearly observed
on the bottom plane along with the dc-biasing network. Hence, that at 12.5 GHz, the reflection phases of the element are 90◦
only two substrate layers are required, and the element structure and −90◦ when the PIN diode turns ON or OFF, respectively.
is simplified. From 12.25 to 12.75 GHz, the phase difference between the two
The geometrical parameters of the RRA element are as fol- states is within 180◦ ±20◦ , indicating good element-bandwidth
lows: px = 6.25 mm, py = 5.0 mm, the thickness of Taconic performance. The element loss is less than 0.4 dB within the fre-
TLX-8 and FR-4 substrates are 1.58 and 0.5 mm, respectively. quency band of interest, regardless of the PIN states. Therefore,
The aimed operating frequency is 12.25–12.75 GHz for satel- 1-bit phase reconfigurability with low loss is achieved, making
lite communications. Half wavelength at the center frequency it suitable for large RRA designs.
of 12.5 GHz (12 mm) is chosen as the element periodicity to
avoid grating lobes. MACOM MADP-000907-14020, which
covers the desired frequency band and shows low insertion B. 10×10 RRA System
loss, is chosen as the PIN diode. For ON or OFF state, the Based on the proposed element, a 10 × 10 RRA prototype is
PIN diode is modeled as a series of lumped resistance (R) and designed and fabricated using printed circuit board (PCB) tech-
inductance (L) or capacitance (C) and inductance (L), respec- nology, as shown in Fig. 2. The RRA aperture is 120 mm ×
tively. Table I lists the corresponding circuit parameters in the 120 mm. On each element, one PIN diode is soldered, and

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2248
Fig. 2. 1-bit 10 × 10 RRA prototype. (a) System assembly. (b) Zoom view.
Fig. 3. (a) Control circuit design. (b) Control board with LEDs all on.
in total, 100 PIN diodes are used to provide individual phase
reconfigurability. An offset corrugated horn is employed as
the feed to illuminate the RRA aperture with its phase center
located at point P(0, yf , zf ). The offset configuration effec-
tively reduces the feed blockage, which is more critical for such
an antenna with small aperture.
The control board is a vital component in RRA designs. It
controls the dc-biasing voltage on each PIN diode, thus achiev-
ing electronic reconfigurability. The control circuit design is
shown in Fig. 3(a). To reduce the complexity of the wiring and
the host system, which would become more critical in large
RRAs, a 74HC164 8-bit shift register (only the last 5 bits are
used) is utilized to control 5 PIN diodes sequentially. To alle-
viate the requirement on the drive current, each output of the
shift register is connected to the base of a BJT, which func-
tions as a switch, and controls the biasing voltage applied on
the PIN diode connected to the emitter of the BJT. A micro-
controller unit (MCU) is employed as the host system, which
distributes the control data in parallel to 20 shift registers and
synchronizes them with one clock (CLK) signal. It is worth-
while to point out that an LED is connected in series with
each PIN diode to indicate the PIN state, making the debugging
and testing procedure easier and straightforward. The fabricated
control board is assembled at the back of the RRA, as shown in
Fig. 3(b).
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
TABLE II
M EASURED G AINS WITH D IFFERENT F EED L OCATIONS
III. O PTIMIZATION AND M EASUREMENT
A 1-bit RRA element can provide only two selectable states
with 180◦ phase difference. As assessed in [29]–[32], the highly
discretized phase would degrade the radiation performance of
RRA such as gain, beam pointing accuracy, and sidelobe level
(SLL). For the proposed RRA, a thorough investigation, includ-
ing the feed location and actual aperture phase distribution, is
carried out to improve the gain as well as beam-scanning per-
formance. Furthermore, some important features such as the
bandwidth performance, the shaped-beam capability, and the
beam-switching time are also elaborated.
A. Selection of Feed Location
In conventional reflectarray designs, the reflectarray aperture
is usually placed in the far-field region of the feed. The incident
field on each element can be considered as a local plane wave
with the phase delay proportional to the spatial distance. The
aperture efficiency or gain can be optimized by properly choos-
ing the feed location (F/D) to balance the spillover efficiency
and illumination efficiency [34].
For an RRA with a small aperture size (120 mm × 120 mm,
5λ × 5λ), the selection of the feed location becomes more
challenging. Regarding the proposed RRA system, the feed
horn diameter is 55 mm with a corresponding far-field dis-
tance of approximately 252 mm. Consequently, an F/D = 2.1
is needed to satisfy the far-field condition of the feed. At this
feed location, the edge taper on the RRA aperture is approx-
imately −1.6 dB, which would cause significant spillover and
gain loss.
To improve the efficiency, the feed should be located closer to
the RRA aperture with the near-field effect taken into account.
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that as F/D decreases, the oblique
incidence angle on the RRA aperture increases accordingly and
the feed blockage becomes severe. Therefore, an optimal feed
location could only be determined once all the aforementioned
factors (near-field effect, oblique incidence, and feed blockage)
are fully considered. After a comprehensive parametric study
with near-field effect considered, a tradeoff is made by placing
the feed at P(0, −75, 161) mm, approximately 2/3 of its far-field
distance. In this case, the edge taper is approximately −3.1 dB,
there is minimum feed blockage for the broadside beam, and
the oblique incidence is acceptable.
The 1-bit 10 × 10 RRA prototype is then measured for the
purpose of verification. The gains for different scan angles,
as summarized in Table II, are compared when the feed is
positioned at P(0, −109, 258) mm and P(0, −75, 161) mm,
respectively. In both cases, the actual feed illuminations are
YANG et al.: 1-BIT 10 × 10 RRA: DESIGN, OPTIMIZATION, AND EXPERIMENT 2249

obtained by taking the near-field effect into consideration using

the time-domain solver in CST, and the aperture phase distri-
butions are calculated accordingly. It is observed that the gain
can be improved by 2.2–3.7 dB by placing the feed closer
to the aperture and reducing the spillover loss, especially for
such a reflectarray with small aperture. Consequently, P(0,
−75, 161) mm is chosen as the feed location in the following
design.

B. Optimization of Compensation Phase Distribution

For a reflectarray antenna, the required compensation phase
ϕrmn for the (m, n)th element is computed by

ϕrmn = ϕf mn − k × û0 × rmn + Δϕ (1)

where ϕf mn is the phase delay corresponding to the spatial

distance from the feed to the (m, n)th element, k is the free
space wavenumber, is the unit vector in the main beam direc-
tion, and is the position vector of the (m, n)th element. It should
be emphasized that a constant reference phase Δϕ is added in
(1) to provide additional design freedom [32], [35], [36].
For a reflectarray using ideal elements with 360◦ full-phase
coverage, different selection of constant Δϕ does not alter the
phase difference between two arbitrary elements in the aper-
ture. For a 1-bit RRA, however, there are only two-phase states
for each element, i.e., 90◦ and −90◦ in this design. If a dif-
ferent Δϕ is chosen, ϕrmn of each element obtained using (1)
changes. When ϕrmn is quantized [32], it will result in different
PIN states (ON or OFF), and the relative phase of two arbitrary
elements may change.
To illustrate this effect, two-phase distributions of the RRA
prototype, both radiating to the broadside, are presented and
compared in Fig. 4(a) and (b) when Δϕ is chosen as 230◦
and 36◦ , respectively. A drastic different phase distribution is Fig. 4. Optimization of compensation phase at 12.5 GHz. (a) Phase distribu-
observed after quantization. More crucially, some of the relative tion with Δϕ = 230◦ . (b) Phase distribution with optimized Δϕ = 36◦ . (c)
phase between elements may change with Δϕ. For instance, Comparison of simulated radiation patterns in the xz–plane. (c) Comparison of
the phase difference between the (5, 6)th and (6, 8)th elements measured radiation patterns in the xz-plane.
changes by 180◦ . As a result, the radiation performance of the TABLE III
RRA may change accordingly. The simulated patterns in CST O PTIMIZED R EFERENCE P HASE , M EASURED B EAM P OINT E RROR ,
and the measured ones with these two-phase distributions at AND HPBW AT 12.5 GH Z U NDER D IFFERENT S CAN A NGLES
12.5 GHz are plotted in Fig. 4(c) and (d) for comparison. It
is observed that the measured gains are 15.1 dBi for Δϕ =
230◦ and 17.5 dBi for Δϕ = 36◦ , respectively. The measured
gain improvement agrees well with simulations. These results
demonstrate that the gain of the 1-bit RRA can be effectively
improved by optimizing the compensation phase.
It is worthwhile to point out that the optimization of the ref-
erence phase is particular useful in reconfigurable reflectarray
designs, since the element phase can be dynamically controlled. radiation performance, the reference phase for each scan angle
As a result, different reference phases for different scan angles is optimized individually, as listed in Table III.
can be readily achieved in RRAs. Some representative measured scan beams in the xz-plane
are shown in Fig. 5. Owning to the well-performing RRA ele-
ment and effectively optimized phase distribution, well-defined
C. Beam-Scanning Performance scan beams are successfully obtained by the RRA prototype
The element compensation phase of the RRA prototype within a large scan range. The simulated and measured gains
can be controlled by turning ON or OFF the PIN diodes, and at 12.5 GHz within ±50◦ scan range are plotted in Fig. 6.
electronic scan beams can thus be obtained. To improve the Good agreements are clearly observed. For the broadside beam,

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2250
Fig. 5. Measured scan beams in the xz-plane at 12.5 GHz.
Fig. 6. Simulated and measured gains at different scan angles at 12.5 GHz.
the measured gain is 17.5 dBi, corresponding to a maximum
aperture efficiency of 17.9% using the following definition:
G
η=
4πA/λ2
where G is the measured gain and A is the aperture area. To
further illustrate the beam-scanning performance, the obtained
beam point error, defined by the difference of measured
beam point and target beam point, as well as the half-power
beamwidth (HPBW) at each scan angle is summarized in
Table III. The HPBW increases with scan angle, which agrees
with the decreasing gain in Fig. 6. As a result of the asym-
metric element structure in the xz-plane (shown in Figs. 1(a)
and 2), 0.1◦ beam point error is observed even for the broad-
side beam, regardless of the symmetric phase distribution in
Fig. 4(b). The beam point error reaches around 2.5◦ (approx-
imately 0.16 HPBW) when the beam scanning to ±50◦ . Since
the phase distribution is designed using (1) and then quan-
tized, a closed-loop control [22] can be employed to reduce the
beam point error. Additionally, as pointed out in our previous
work [32], the large beam point error here will become much
imperceptible with increasing aperture size.
The bandwidth performance of the 10 × 10 RRA is also mea-
sured. As shown in Fig. 7, good agreement between simulation
and measurement is observed, and the gain is stable within the
frequency band of interests. To further demonstrate its good
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured gain at different frequencies for the broadside
beam.
bandwidth performance, the scan beams in the xz-plane are
compared at three frequencies in Fig. 8. It is clear to see that
both the gain and the beam direction remain close from 11.75
to 13.25 GHz for each scan beam.
Two major limitations, however, exist in this work: 1) the rel-
atively low aperture efficiency and 2) high SLLs. Having taken
into account the quantization loss of about 3 dB for a typical
1-bit RRA, the aperture efficiency is expected to be 30% the-
oretically. However, the radiation performance of the proposed
RRA is restricted by its small aperture size. Being illuminated
by a medium-gain feed, the edge taper of the RRA aperture
is only −3.1 dB, which causes significant spillover and lowers
the overall aperture efficiency. Table IV lists the loss budget for
the broadside beam at 12.5 GHz. It suggests that the spillover
loss is 2.2 dB, which becomes the main reason of the gain loss
observed in this design. The spillover energy also increases the
edge diffraction and SLLs. As seen in Fig. 5, two high sidelobes
(2) occur around ±150◦ regardless of the scan angle.
The specular reflection by nonresonance elements and the
ground plane [1] also plays a crucial role in these two issues.
Restricted by the small aperture size, the gain of the RRA (17.5
dBi) is only slightly higher than that of the feed (15.3 dBi).
The reflected energy becomes comparable to that reradiated
by the RRA elements, especially in the sidelobe regions. The
simulated and measured three-dimensional (3-D) radiation pat-
terns of the broadside-beam design in the uv-plane are shown
in Fig. 9. Both show high sidelobes in the specular direction of
up to −5.3 and −3.7 dB, respectively, when normalized to the
main beam.
The specular reflection severely reduces the gain of the RRA
and increases the SLLs. This effect becomes more severe as the
scan angle increases. As shown in Fig. 5, the specular reflection
raises the envelop of the sidelobes up to −5.9 dB in measure-
ments. It may even totally corrupt the radiation pattern if the
beam is scanned in the yz-plane (offset plane). Especially when
the main beam is scanned toward the feed, e.g., the scan beam
at −20◦ direction as shown in Fig. 10, the specular reflection is
far away from the main beam and becomes dominant in its radi-
ation pattern. The feed blockage further reduces the main beam
gain. As a result, the scan beam is considerably deformed.
YANG et al.: 1-BIT 10 × 10 RRA: DESIGN, OPTIMIZATION, AND EXPERIMENT 2251

TABLE IV
10 × 10 RRA L OSS B UDGET FOR THE B ROADSIDE B EAM AT 12.5 GH Z

Fig. 9. 3-D radiation patterns of the broadside beam in the uv-plane at

12.5 GHz. (a) Full-wave simulation. (b) Measurement.

Fig. 8. Comparison of the measured scan beams in the xz-plane at different

frequencies. (a) 0◦ . (b) 20◦ . (c) 40◦ .

For RRAs with large apertures, the illumination can be eas-

ily optimized and the specular reflection is usually much lower
compared to the antenna gain. It is believed that these problems
can be readily solved, and better radiation performance can thus
be obtained.

D. Wide-Beam Synthesis
A wide beam is often combined with a pencil beam in certain
applications for wide coverage and fine resolution, respectively.
Therefore, the synthesis of a wide beam is of great interest and
hence investigated using the designed 1-bit RRA.
Fig. 10. Measured scan beams in the yz-plane at 12.5 GHz: −20◦ (red dashed
line), broadside (black solid line), and 40◦ (blue dot dash line).
The conventional phase-synthesis method in array theories
is not feasible due to the highly quantized phase in this 1-bit
RRA. Therefore, the GA optimization, based on binary coding,

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2252
Fig. 11. Wide-beam optimization using GA at 12.5 GHz. (a) Optimized
compensation phase distribution. (b) Simulated and measured patterns.
TABLE V
C OMPARISON OF B EAM P ERFORMANCE
becomes a suitable choice as the two available phase states
of each element can be easily coded as “0” and “1.” The
optimization is conducted by setting a cost function as
 2
Cost = (F (u, v) − ML (u, v))
(u, v) ∈ main beam
and F (u, v) < ML (u, v)
 2
+ (F (u, v) − MU (u, v))
(u, v) ∈
/ main beam
and F (u, v) > MU (u, v)
(3)
where u = sinθcosϕ, v = sinθsinϕ, and F is the radiation pat-
tern of the RRA. ML and MU are the lower and upper masks of
the desired radiation pattern, which determine the beamwidth
and SLLs, respectively. The objective 3-dB beamwidth is 20◦
and SLL is −20 dB at 12.5 GHz. Due to the symmetry of the
structure, a binary string of 50 unknowns is then optimized
using GA.
The optimized compensation phase distribution is shown in
Fig. 11(a), and the simulated and measured radiation patterns
are plotted in Fig. 11(b). The radiation characteristics are tab-
ulated in Table V and compared to those of the pencil-beam
design as shown in Fig. 8(a). The main beam obtained from the
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 6, JUNE 2016
Fig. 12. Measurement of beam-switching time. (a) Test system. (b) Measured
response time of switching beams.
wide-beam synthesis is substantially broadened. The measured
3-dB beamwidth is 20.5◦ , nearly twice of the pencil beam.
Regardless of the measured high sidelobes due to the diffrac-
tion from the metal frame, the fabrication, and alignment errors,
a wide-beam pattern synthesis has been successfully obtained
using the 1-bit RRA with a small aperture size.
E. Beam-Switching Time
The response time of switching the beam from one direc-
tion to another is important in many applications such as fast
searching and tracking. With regard to the proposed RRA sys-
tem, the switching speed of the PIN diode is 2–3 ns. So, the
total response time mainly depends on the control circuit. As
shown in Fig. 3(a) and explained in Section II, each shift reg-
ister controls 5 PIN diodes sequentially, and 20 shift registers
are connected in parallel and controlled by an MCU. The clock
rate of the MCU is 64 MHz, and a four-fold frequency divider
is used. The time of each operation cycle is 62.5 ns accordingly.
To change one PIN diode status in each shift register, 40 oper-
ation cycles, i.e., 2.5 µs, in total are needed after compiling.
Therefore, to complete five sequential shifts, the total response
time is approximately 12.5 µs.
A test system as shown in Fig. 12(a) is setup to measure the
beam-switching time [28]. The RRA electronically switches the
beam from broadside direction to a specific scan angle, and
an oscilloscope (Agilent DSO-X 3052A) is used to observe
the signal level received by a horn antenna. The time between
YANG et al.: 1-BIT 10 × 10 RRA: DESIGN, OPTIMIZATION, AND EXPERIMENT
two steady states is considered as the beam-switching time.
As seen in Fig. 12(b), for all 3 tests, 5 hops are observed,
which correspond to 5 sequential shifts of each shift register;
the response time between two steady states on each curve
is approximately 12 µs. A good agreement is thus obtained
between calculations and measurements. Note that the nega-
tive voltage in Fig. 12(b) is due to the negative detector (HP
11975-60021) used in experiments.
It is worthwhile to point out that the beam-switching time can
be further reduced by five times if all the PIN diodes are fully
parallelized at the cost of increased complexity in the wiring
and the host system.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A 1-bit 10 × 10 electronically RRA at Ku band is thoroughly
investigated with measurements. A simple RRA element, which
has only one PIN diode and two substrate layers, is designed
to provide two quantized phase states with 180◦ phase differ-
ence and low element loss. The practical impacts of the feed
location and aperture phase reference on the small-size reflec-
tarray are discussed, and they are then optimized to improve
the antenna gain and aperture efficiency. The measured maxi-
mum gain is 17.5 dBi with corresponding aperture efficiency
of 17.9% at 12.5 GHz. Well-defined scan beams within ±50◦
are obtained, and the scan beams are consistent from 11.75
to 13.25 GHz. In addition, a wide-beam pattern synthesis is
accomplished using GA to demonstrate the versatility of the 1-
bit RRA, which not only can scan the beam but also can shape
the beam. The beam-switching time is theoretically analyzed
and verified by measurements, and a fast beam scan (12 µs) is
obtained.
Special attention is given to the RRA with a relatively small
aperture size. Specifically, the specular reflection effect and
its negative impact on the radiation performance of the RRA
are discussed in detail. It is believed that an RRA with a
larger aperture size is able to achieve better two-dimensional
beam-scanning performance with higher aperture efficiency.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank L. Xiong and F. Guo for their
assistance in antenna measurements.
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Huanhuan Yang (S’15) received the B.S.
and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering
from the Air Force Engineering University
(AFEU), Xi’an, China, in 2010 and 2012,
respectively.
Since 2013, he has been a Joint-Supervision
Ph.D. student at the AFEU and Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China. His research interests include recon-
figurable antenna, reflectarray, metasurface, and
antenna RCS reduction technique.
Fan Yang (S’96–M’03–SM’08) received the B.S.
and M.S. degrees from the Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China, in 1997 and 1999, respectively; and
the Ph.D. degree from the University of California
at Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA, in
2002, all in electrical engineering.
From 1994 to 1999, he was a Research Assistant
with the State Key Laboratory of Microwave and
Digital Communications, Tsinghua University. From
1999 to 2002, he was a Graduate Student Researcher
with the Antenna Laboratory, UCLA. From 2002
to 2004, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Engineer and Instructor with
the Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA. In August 2004, he joined
the Department of Electrical Engineering, the University of Mississippi,
Oxford, MS, USA, as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to an
Associate Professor. In 2010, he became a Professor with the Department of
Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, and has served as the Director
of the Microwave and Antenna Institute since then. He has authored or
coauthored more than 200 journal articles and conference papers, 5 book
chapters, and 5 books entitled Scattering Analysis of Periodic Structures
Using Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method (Morgan and Claypool, 2012),
Electromagnetic Band Gap Structures in Antenna Engineering (Cambridge
Univ. Press, 2009), and Electromagnetics and Antenna Optimization Using
Taguchi’s Method (Morgan and Claypool, 2007). His research interests include
antenna theory, designs, measurements, electromagnetic band gap (EBG) struc-
tures and their applications, computational electromagnetics and optimization
techniques, and applied electromagnetic systems.
Dr. Yang serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
A NTENNAS AND P ROPAGATION and Applied Computational Electromagnetics
Society (ACES) journal. He served as the TPC Chair of the 2014 IEEE AP-
S International Symposium. He is also a frequent reviewer for more than 20
scientific journals and book publishers. He has chaired numerous technical
sessions in various international symposia. He was the recipient of several pres-
tigious awards and recognitions, including the 2004 Certificate for Exceptional
Accomplishment in Research and Professional Development Award of UCLA,
the Young Scientist Award of the 2005 URSI General Assembly and of the 2007
International Symposium on Electromagnetic Theory, the 2008 Junior Faculty
Research Award of the University of Mississippi, the 2009 inaugural IEEE
Donald G. Dudley, Jr. Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the 2011 Recipient
of Global Experts Program of China.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Indian Institute Of Technology Jammu. Downloaded on June 13,2021 at 03:41:31 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Shenheng Xu (M’09) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees from the Southeast University, Nanjing,
China, in 2001 and 2004, respectively; and the
Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA), CA, USA, in 2009, all in electrical
engineering.
From 2000 to 2004, he was a Research Assistant
with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves,
Southeast University. Since September 2004, he has
been a Graduate Student Researcher and later a
Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Antenna Research,
Analysis, and Measurement Laboratory, UCLA. In July 2012, he became an
Associate Professor with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China. His research interests include novel designs of
reflector and reflectarray antennas for advanced applications, evolutionary
algorithms, and electromagnetic and antenna theories.
Yilin Mao received the B.S. degree from Beihang
University, Beijing, China, in 2004 and the Ph.D.
degree from the University of Mississippi, Oxford,
MS, USA, in 2014, both in electrical engineering.
Currently, she is working as a Hardware Engineer
with the Hughes Network System. Her research inter-
ests include patch antenna, reflectarray, and phased
array antenna.
Maokun Li (M’04) received the B.S. degree in elec-
trical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China, in 2002; and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in
electrical engineering from the University of Illinois
at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA, in 2004
and 2007, respectively.
After completing graduation, he was a Research
Scientist with the Schlumberger-Doll Research,
Cambridge, MA, USA. In 2014, he joined the
Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China, as an Associate Professor.
He has coauthored more than 20 journal papers and filed 2 U.S. patents. His
research interests include fast algorithms for computational electromagnetics
and inverse scattering problems.
Dr. Li was the recipient of the China National Youth 1000 Talent Plan in
2014 with research support.
Xiangyu Cao (SM’08) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees from the Air Force Missile Institute (AFEI),
Xi’an, China, in 1986 and 1989, respectively; and
the Ph.D. degree from the Missile Institute of Air
Force Engineering University (AFEU), Xi’an, China,
in 1999, all in electrical engineering.
She joined AFEI in 1989 as an Assistant Teacher
and became an Associate Professor in 1996. From
1999 to 2002, she was engaged in Post-Doctoral
Research with Xidian University, Xi’an, China. She
was a Senior Research Associate with the Department
of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, from
June 2002 to December 2003. She is currently a Professor of AFEU. She has
authored and coauthored more than 120 technical journal articles and con-
ference papers. Her research interests include computational electromagnetic,
smart antennas, electromagnetic metamaterial, and their antenna applications.
Jun Gao received the B.S and M.S degrees from the
Air Force Missile Institute (AFEI), Xi’an, China, in
1984 and 1987, respectively.
He joined the AFEI in 1987 as an Assistant Teacher
and became an Associate Professor in 2000. He
is currently a Professor of Air Force Engineering
University (AFEU), Xi’an, China. His research inter-
ests include smart antennas, electromagnetic meta-
material, and their antenna applications.