3-D Reflectarray Antenna Design for Ku Application Using 3-D Printer Technology

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and experimental validation of a Ku-band 3D-printed reflectarray (RA) antenna established on a quasi-periodic arrangement, operating at 13 GHz. The proposed grounded dielectric 3D unit cell consists of a polylactic acid (PLA)-based multilayer structure incorporating a constant height prism on top of which a variable height square prism resonator is located; such a configuration is maintained at a constant distance from the ground plane by an air spacer. The arrangement enables continuous reflection-phase control through geometry and material parameter tuning. A systematic parametric analysis is conducted to quantify the influence of air-gap thickness, dielectric thickness, relative permittivity, and resonator dimensions on the reflection-phase response. The results demonstrate that the air spacer provides the dominant phase-adjustment mechanism, while the remaining parameters enable fine-resolution phase compensation, forming a practical and fabrication-aware phase-synthesis strategy. Using full-wave–generated phase mapping and classical RA compensation principles, a 16\times 16 array comprising 256 elements with an aperture size of 240\times 240 mm2 is synthesized. The simulated and measured maximum gains at 13 GHz are 22.8 dBi and 21.4 dBi, respectively, with controlled sidelobe levels and stable main-beam polarization characteristics, while the corresponding aperture efficiency is 10.2%. A prototype has been fabricated using additive manufacturing technology and experimentally characterized in a horn-fed measurement setup. The measured radiation characteristics show good agreement with simulations, validating both the unit-cell model and the aperture-level phase distribution methodology. The proposed approach demonstrates that low-cost 3D-printing technology can realize high-gain Ku-band RAs without multilayer stacking or complex fabrication processes. Owing to its scalability, lightweight structure, and compatibility with tunable elements, the presented design framework offers a promising pathway toward broadband, reconfigurable RAs and next-generation intelligent reflecting surfaces for satellite and high-frequency wireless communication applications.