Compact Cassegrain Antenna based-on a Low-Profile Multi-faceted Reflectarray

This paper presents the design of a compact Cassegrain antenna that uses a multi-faceted reflectarray as a main reflector. The multi-faceted surface comprises several panels with different angular orientations, to conform a cylindrical parabolic profile along one plane. A prototype of this antenna concept has been manufactured and tested to provide a high-gain in dual-linear polarization at Ka band. When compared to an equivalent single-facet aperture, the multi-faceted approach effectively benefits from the parabolic profile optics to reduce the differential spatial phase delay. Consequently, the required phase excursion is smaller compared to the single-facet flat topology, resulting in enhanced beamwidth stability in the sectorization plane. The proposed low-profile multi-faceted antenna demonstrates better in-band performance than other similar works in the literature, while maintaining similar compactness.