A Metal-Only Reflectarray Made of 3D Phoenix Cells

This paper presents a metal-only reflectarray antenna made of 3D phoenix cells and its fabrication using additive manufacturing. An electric circuit is proposed for analyzing the behavior and capabilities of the considered cell. The agreement between full-wave simulations and the circuit predictions is very satisfactory when varying the cell geometrical parameters on a large range of values. The simulated gain of the designed reflectarray at 20 GHz is 30.2 dBi with an efficiency of 49.3% and a 1 dB-gain bandwidth of 17.5%. The proposed reflectarray is suitable for working in severe environments due to its metal-only characteristics.