Reconfigurable Antennas and Wave Processing Surfaces

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The proposed research program is aiming at the development of new reconfigurable antenna concepts that can enhance the performance and durability of telecommunication satellites reflector antennas and the beam steering capabilities of radar antennas such as those used for weather forecasting.For satellite antennas, the research will focus on field-selectable transmitarray surfaces. The objective is to be able to reconfigure the coverage zone of a satellite during its mission by inserting small lightweight planar multilayer surfaces in the feed system. These surfaces impose a spatial phase modulation of the wave impinging on the antenna's main parabolic reflector, and therefore play a role analogous to main reflector shaping. Such reconfiguration of a satellite's earth coverage can extend its mission and contribute to sustainable development. With a finer control on the transmitarray it would also be possible to mitigate inter-satellite interference.The objective of the work related to radar antennas is to propose new low-cost technologies that would allow agile beam scanning. In particular, magnetically actuated "bed-of-nails" structures inserted in waveguides will be studied, with the aim of realizing a low-cost phase shifter that can operate at high levels of radio frequency power. With such phase shifters, it would for instance become possible to implement electronically steerable antennas in radars used by weather forecasting agencies, and improve the capability to predict extreme climatic events. Reconfiguration of reflectarrays implemented in the substrate-integrated circuit technology and of periodically loaded leaky waveguides will also be considered.