A Study of Spatial Quantization Effects on Reconfigurable Reflectarray Antennas

From a perspective of spatial quantization, this letter systematically investigates the advantages of reconfigurable reflectarrays (RRAs) designed with closely-spaced elements. Focused on sidelobe level (SLL) and scanning performance, RRAs with element periods of λ/2, λ/4 and λ/8 are studied sequentially. Both theoretical and simulation results show that under the condition of the same aperture size, as the number of spatial quantization bits increases, the SLL performance of RRAs with 1-bit phase will have an improvement of about 3 dB to 10 dB. Furthermore, spatial quantization enhances scanning accuracy at 60° by 3.45° and reduces scanning loss by 1.93 dB. This study provides a useful reference for RRA designs for communication and radar systems.