Recent Development of Tightly Coupled Reflectarray Antenna (TCRA) for Multifunctional Systems

The TCRA has been a hot topic in the area of reflectarray design, because it can operate over multi-octave frequency range, enabling it to be deployed in multifunctional systems. This paper presents a detailed review of the recent development of TCRA at the University of Kent and Shenzhen University. To illustrate the evolution of TCRA, three case studies are provided. Firstly, a novel tightly coupled dipole reflectarray antenna whose unit cell is consisted of a tightly coupled dipole and a delay line is introduced. This reflectarray operates from 3.4 to 10.6 GHz with stable radiation patterns. Then, an ultra-wideband reflectarray antenna using connected dipoles is introduced. The reflectarray antenna maintains undistorted beams and high antenna gain from 10 to 30 GHz. In the end, the TCRA employs a polarization converter (PC) to overcome the limitation of bandwidth caused by the ground plane truncation is demonstrated. The antenna has stable radiation patterns and relative high gain within an operating bandwidth from 4 to 20 GHz.