Investigations of the Effects of Mutual Coupling in Reflectarray Antennas

In this paper, we investigate the effects of mutual coupling in reflectarray antennas because this remains one of the most critical points in reflectarray design. By including the scattering-matrix effect in the synthesis procedure, we demonstrate that the mutual coupling between the cells affects not only the reradiated phases, but also the magnitude of the reradiated waves, which is the originality of the paper. This paper highlights the interactions between the cells, leading to a better understanding of the radiation pattern´s behavior. A full-wave simulation is used to successfully validate the synthesis procedure and the effects of mutual coupling. The presented approach is currently confined to the case of identical cells with reactive loads as phase-compensation elements.