Design of folded reflect array antenna with broadband and wide-angle coverage

In this paper, a broadband wide-angle coverage beam scanning folded reflect array (FRA) antenna is proposed and designed. In order to obtain lower scanning loss in broadband range and wide beam coverage range (BCR), a multi-beam optimization method is proposed, which considers the illumination weighting factor, the intercepted power weighting factor and the frequency weighting factor. Furthermore, in order to reduce the profile of the FRA antenna, a small size patch antenna is used as the feed, which is integrated with a single-layer reflector. Finally, an 11 beam scanning FRA antenna with a size of 264 mm×264 mm working in Ku band is further designed. The effectiveness of the proposed design method is verified by simulation. The simulation results show that the design is within the broadband range from 13.5 GHz to 16.5 GHz, the 3 dB beam can cover ±28°, the maximum gain of center frequency is 26.9 dBi, and the aperture efficiency range is 14%－20.9%. The designed common aperture FRA antenna can obtain fairly flat gain, and the scanning loss is within 3 dB. The antenna has the advantages of wide coverage, broadband coverage, high integration, maximum gain, maximum aperture efficiency, and has broad application prospects in wireless communication, radar imaging, target recognition, and other fields.