Design of a Ku/Ka quad-band reflectarray antenna for satellite communications

A quad-band reflectarray antenna that operates at both Ku (12.5 and 14.25 GHz) and Ka (20.4 and 30.2 GHz) bands is designed for satellite communications. The multi-layer configuration is adopted with the frequency selective surface (FSS) backed Ka-band elements above the Ku-band elements. An FSS with triple ring slots is optimized to achieve transmission at Ku band and reflection at Ka band simultaneously. A triple-resonance element with two square loops and a square patch is designed for wideband operation at Ku band, while a Phoenix-type element is designed for dual-frequency operation at Ka band. The dual-frequency phase synthesis method is then utilized separately at both bands to achieve receive/transmit coverage. The full-wave simulation of the proposed reflectarray using CST with GPU acceleration verifies that good radiation performance is successfully obtained with aperture efficiencies of 46.0%, 47.6%, 68.6%, and 55.7% at four operation frequencies, respectively.