A Deployable and Reconfigurable Origami Reflectarray Based on the Miura-Ori Pattern

Abstract

This paper presents a novel origami reflectarray unit-cell based on the Miura-Ori pattern. This origami unit-cell allows for efficient folding/unfolding, high packing efficiency and easy deployment. The unit-cell is composed of 4 parallelogram patches that can achieve 560° phase shift. A 20 × 20 element Miura-Ori reflectarray is optimized and designed to radiate a beam toward direction θ=20° and φ=0° at 8.425 GHz. A maximum realized gain of 26 dBi is obtained. The proposed antenna's main advantage is its ability to efficiently pack itself at its fully folded state to occupy 4 to 5 times smaller volume than the one at its fully deployed state. This is very important for small satellite applications.