Additive Manufacturing Folded Reflectarray

A 3D printed folded reflectarray that uses fully dielectric resonator elements and a spherical polarizer realized with a metalized plastic structure is presented in this paper. To reduce the thickness of the reflecting surface, a 3D printable dielectric material with a high-value of the dielectric constant is used, while the spherical polarizer is exploited to enhance the reflectarray bandwidth compared to a flat configuration. Preliminary results show very good performance of the antenna, with a gain of about 28 dBi and an efficiency greater than 50% in the whole 1-dB bandwidth of 13.4%.