Antenna array elements for Ka-band satellite communication on the move

Two dual-polarised reflectarray unit cells for the folded reflectarray and one linearly polarized array element for direct radiating array for Ka-band SatCom on the move are presented in this paper. All of these antenna unit cells have multi-layered structure and are designed for the smart array antenna with beams that can be steered to large scanning angles. The unit cells for reflectarray are designed to operate at 29.5-30.8GHz band for both transmitting and receiving while the antenna element for the direct radiating array is designed to have a dual band operation: 29.5-30.8GHz for transmitting and 19.7-21.0GHz for receiving. These three antenna elements have a low profile and the simulation results show that they exhibit good radiation performance over the required frequency bands.