Low-Cost Transmitarray Design with High Gain Bandwidth and Suppressed SLL

This study presents a transmitarray antenna design operating at a center frequency of 9 GHz, addressing the need for high-gain and broad bandwidth antennas in modern data communication. The proposed design is structured as a quad-layer configuration using FR-4 dielectric substrates. The transmitarray’s phase profile is tailored to deliver a wideband flat response with low Side Lobe Level (SLL) and stable aperture efficiency across the operating band. It achieves a 1-dB gain bandwidth of 12.12% (from 8.56 GHz to 9.67 GHz) and a 3-dB gain bandwidth of 49.43% (from 8.45 GHz to 13.46 GHz) with an aperture efficiency of 21.3%. A prototype of the proposed design with 11 × 11 elements was fabricated and measured, and its measurement results closely aligned with simulation results, validating its performance. The proposed simple design realizes reduced complexity and fabrication costs while expanding operational gain bandwidth, thereby demonstrating substantial promise for next-generation X-band communication systems.