TY - JOUR
T1 - A 400-GHz wideband high-gain quartz-based single-layered folded reflectarray antenna for terahertz applications
AU - Miao, Zhuo-Wei
AU - Hao, Zhang-Cheng
AU - Wang, Yi
AU - Jin, Biaobing
AU - Wu, Jing-Bo
AU - Hong, Wei
PY - 2018/11/23
Y1 - 2018/11/23
N2 - Compact high-gain antennas are highly desired in the high speed terahertz (THz) wireless system, especially for the space limited application such as the high speed inter-link inside the high density wireless communication base station. To this end, a 400-GHz folded reflectarray (FRA) antenna with high gain, high aperture efficiency and compact profile is proposed in this paper. It is composed of a feed source, a single-layered reflectarray using a lithography process on quartz, and a wire-grid polarizer implemented by the printed-circuit-board (PCB) technology. A 3-D printed fixture is used to assemble all parts together. In order to design accurately the proposed antenna, the THz electromagnetic properties of the supporting dielectric materials are extracted by using a THz time-domain spectrometer system. Then, a single-layered phasing element, made up of a pair of orthogonally I-shaped structures with an open square ring, is proposed and designed based on the extracted material characteristics. Both phase compensation and polarization conversion can be realized by the proposed unit cell. A reflectarray is designed by using the proposed phasing element with the conventional array synthesizing theory, and a THz grid polarizer is designed with strips on a 0.127 mm Taconic TLY-5 ubstrate. The THz grid is placed in front of the THz feed and the reflectarray, which is fully reflective to the feed and transparent to the reflectarray. All components of the FRA antenna have been fabricated and assembled. Experiments show that the FRA prototype has a peak gain of 33.66 dBi at 400 GHz with an aperture efficiency of 33.65%, and a 3-dB gain bandwidth of 16% (357-421 GHz).
AB - Compact high-gain antennas are highly desired in the high speed terahertz (THz) wireless system, especially for the space limited application such as the high speed inter-link inside the high density wireless communication base station. To this end, a 400-GHz folded reflectarray (FRA) antenna with high gain, high aperture efficiency and compact profile is proposed in this paper. It is composed of a feed source, a single-layered reflectarray using a lithography process on quartz, and a wire-grid polarizer implemented by the printed-circuit-board (PCB) technology. A 3-D printed fixture is used to assemble all parts together. In order to design accurately the proposed antenna, the THz electromagnetic properties of the supporting dielectric materials are extracted by using a THz time-domain spectrometer system. Then, a single-layered phasing element, made up of a pair of orthogonally I-shaped structures with an open square ring, is proposed and designed based on the extracted material characteristics. Both phase compensation and polarization conversion can be realized by the proposed unit cell. A reflectarray is designed by using the proposed phasing element with the conventional array synthesizing theory, and a THz grid polarizer is designed with strips on a 0.127 mm Taconic TLY-5 ubstrate. The THz grid is placed in front of the THz feed and the reflectarray, which is fully reflective to the feed and transparent to the reflectarray. All components of the FRA antenna have been fabricated and assembled. Experiments show that the FRA prototype has a peak gain of 33.66 dBi at 400 GHz with an aperture efficiency of 33.65%, and a 3-dB gain bandwidth of 16% (357-421 GHz).
KW - Folded reflectarray antenna
KW - terahertz
KW - THz time-domain spectrometer
KW - material characteristics
KW - single-layer
KW - quartz substrate
KW - high-gain
KW - 3-D printing
U2 - 10.1109/TTHZ.2018.2883215
DO - 10.1109/TTHZ.2018.2883215
M3 - Article
SN - 2156-342X
JO - IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology
JF - IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology
ER -