Performance investigation of reflectarray resonant elements for 5G communications

Abstract

The performance analysis of reflectarray resonant elements based on Finite Integral Method is presented in this work for 5G antenna systems. Reflection loss, bandwidth and linear phase range of square and circular resonant element configurations have been investigated at 15 GHz and 20 GHz frequencies. Periodic reflectarrays consisting of 5×5 elements have been designed at 20 GHz for both elements separately in order to evaluate their maximum gain performance. The single element bandwidth in a unit cell environment has also been compared with the full reflectarray bandwidth. It has been observed that the reflectarray composed of circular elements attains a higher gain of 15.03 dBi with a lower reflection loss of 0.47 dB as compared to square elements which offer a gain of 14.14 dBi with a reflection loss of 0.50 dB. The relationship between the reflection loss, gain and bandwidth presented in this work is shown to drastically affect the reflectarray performance which can be critical for 5G communication systems.