W-Band Confocal Antenna System Based on Liquid Crystal Reflectarray for Beam Scanning Applications

Abstract

A confocal antenna system is designed and simulated to demonstrate beam scanning capabilities at W-band. The steering component is a reconfigurable reflectarray based on liquid crystal (LC) technology. Full-wave analysis is performed to obtain the frequency response of the reflectarray cells while Physical Theory of Diffraction (PTD) and Physical Optics (PO) are used to calculate reflected fields and radiation patterns. The simulated results give a maximum gain of 30 dB and a scanning range of 20° in both planes φ = 0° and φ=90°.