Reflectarray reflection phase diagnostics

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel diagnostic procedure for reflectarray design. By separating the fields into their incident, scattered and total components, one can get great insight into the working of the reflectarray as a parabolic surface. By plotting the actual phase provided by each reflectarray element in the true reflectarray environment, one can diagnose the design and find the flaws in the existing design. In order to validate this diagnostic approach, a good and a defected reflectarray were designed. The defected design produced lower directivity and higher side lobes. Using this diagnostic procedure, the defected area of the reflectarray was successfully identified.