Analysis, rigorous design and characterization of a three-layer anisotropic transmitarray at 300 GHz

Orestis Koutsos (1, 2) , Francesco Manzillo (1, 2) , Antonio Clemente (1, 2) , Ronan Sauleau (3)

1 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
2 UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
3 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique

A novel approach for studying and designing lowcost anisotropic transmitarrays at sub-THz frequencies is presented here. The array comprises three metal layers and two interleaved dielectric spacers. A four-port equivalent circuit model is derived to accurately model the anisotropic behavior of the unit-cell. The analysis proves theoretically that nearly perfect transmission and complete phase control can be achieved at the same time. A systematic procedure optimizing the admittance tensor of the inner layer is described for the unit-cell design. A 3-bit transmitarray antenna at 300 GHz is fabricated using a standard printed circuit board process. The measured results demonstrate that the design methodology is effective even under strict technological constraints. The antenna achieves a peak gain of 32.2 dBi with 36.5% aperture efficiency and 70.4 GHz of 3-dB bandwidth.

Keywords: transmitarray; anisotropy; equivalent circuit; periodic structures; 300 GHz; sub-THz; admittance tensor

Domains: Physics [physics]

Orestis Koutsos, Francesco Manzillo, Antonio Clemente, Ronan Sauleau. Analysis, rigorous design and characterization of a three-layer anisotropic transmitarray at 300 GHz. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2022, 70 (7), pp.5437-5446. ⟨10.1109/TAP.2022.3145506⟩. ⟨cea-03637103⟩