Reflectarray antennas are becoming a robust alternative to long distance communication, spaceborne antennas for contoured beams and beam scanning, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and radiometric remote-sensing, when compared with phased arrays and reflector antennas. Conventionally, reflectarrays use printed-circuit technology with multilayer techniques providing an economical solution with a good performance as alternative to reflector antennas in Communication Satellites. The reduced bandwidth of the printed elements and the differential spatial phase delay constitute one of the main limitations of reflectarrays. This drawback can be overcome using several layers of printed elements designed to improve the bandwidth up to 15%. When low-loss materials are used, ohmic losses in reflectarrays are comparable to those produced in reflector antennas. This seminar will focus on dual reflectarray antenna configurations where the sub-, the main- or both reflectors can be replaced by reflectarrays. Dual reflectarray antennas implemented with two flat reflectarrays are highly compact. These antennas provide phase control in both surfaces which gives additional degrees of freedom that can be used to further improve the performance of the antenna for specific applications.
Carolina Tienda was born in Málaga. She received the Telecommunication Engineer degree from the Universidad de Málaga (UMA), Málaga, Spain, in October 2005, and the Telecommunication Ph.D. degree from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain, in March 2012.
From October 2005 to April 2006, she was with the Communications Department, UMA as a Project Assistant. from April 2006 to April 2008, she was working as an RF & Antenna Engineer for INDRA ESPACIO, Madrid, Spain. In May 2008, she joined the Antenna and Sub-Millimeter Wave Section, Electromagnetic Division, European Space Agency ESTEC, The Netherlands, where she worked as Spanish Trainee. from May 2010 to June 2012, she was with the Electromagnetism and Circuits Theory Department at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain, as an Antenna Researcher. She participated in different research projects supported by the Spanish Government and the European Space Agency (ESA). From October 2012 until June 2016, she was with the Radar Concepts Department at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Since July 2016 she is with the antenna group at Stevenage, her current research interests include the analysis and design of space antennas, particularly printed reflectarray antennas in dual reflectarray configurations and DBF (Digital Beam Forming) based parabolic reflector.
Professor Steven Gao will chair the seminar and all members of staff are welcome to attend. RA’s and postgraduate students are particularly encouraged to attend.