Space-Time Modulated vs 2-Bit Reflect-Arrays: A Comparison of Main Beam Gain and Sidelobe Level Performance

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the phase errors introduced by 2-bit reflectarray architectures and investigates their impact on aperture synthesis for beam-steering applications. Building upon this analysis, an amplitude-aware synthesis technique based on space-time modulated (STM) reflect-arrays is proposed to mitigate the main-beam gain degradation commonly associated with STM-based equivalent phase generation while preserving the enhanced phase resolution enabled by temporal coding. A 10{\lambda}by 10{\lambda} reflect-array aperture with {\lambda}/2 inter-element spacing is considered, where the desired aperture phase distribution is synthesized using a library of achievable reflection coefficients generated from all possible combinations of four 2-bit phase states distributed across (L) temporal segments. The proposed approach introduces a phase-tolerance window and selects the reflection state with the highest reflectance within the allowable phase range. By exploiting the inherent amplitude diversity of the STM state space, the proposed approach maximizes aperture efficiency while maintaining the desired beam-steering phase distribution. Numerical results demonstrate that the method substantially reduces the gain penalty typically associated with STM reflect-arrays along with providing significant sidelobe suppression.