Research on high-power microwave experiments for a magnetic-enhanced reflectarray antenna

Simulations have shown that the ε-negative metamaterial-based magnetic enhanced reflectarray antenna (MERA) element has comparable power handling capacity (PHC) to all-metal high-power microwave (HPM) antennas. This demonstrates the potential of microstrip antennas in the HPM field. Although an X-band MERA prototype has been designed that achieves high radiation performance, there has been no suitable method to evaluate its PHC characteristics. This paper presents the design and fabrication of an experimental HPM platform operating at 9.4 GHz to verify the prototype's PHC, as well as the results of HPM experiments. This work experimentally demonstrated the feasibility of applying MERA to the HPM field. The experimental results indicate that the designed MERA remains stable under HPM illumination and confirm that the PHC of the MERA element reaches 1 GW/m2. These results are important for advancing microstrip antenna development in the HPM field.