Bandwidth Performances of Reconfigurable Reflectarrays: State of Art and Future Challenges

Reconfigurable antennas allow to meet the increasing demands of modern RF communication systems for reconfiguration capabilities, such as beam-steering, multi-band operation, polarization flexibility or frequency agility. Active reflectarrays may represent a valuable solution to satisfy the above tasks. This paper reviews several experimental implementations of reconfigurable reflectarray designs developed in recent years. The paper describes the approaches adopted in the realization of active reflectarray designs, mainly focusing on their bandwidth performances. Future challenges in the design of wideband reconfigurable reflectarrays are also outlined.