An Active Beam-Reconfigurable Retrodirective Array

Retrodirective arrays can scatter an arbitrarily incident wave back along its incident direction, demonstrating significant potential for wireless communications. However, traditional retrodirective arrays can only reflect incident waves back along a fixed direction. This inherent constraint restricts their application primarily to point-to-point communications. To overcome this constraint, this paper focuses on the study of a beam-reconfigurable retrodirective array. The proposed array consists of dual-beam radiating elements. By incorporating a metallic plate with a tunable tilt angle, the array not only achieves retroreflection but also generates a reconfigurable steering beam. Furthermore, integrating active amplifiers into the array's transmission line network enhances the gain of both beam types. The proposed array system not only responds in real-time to incident waves from different directions but also enables dynamic switching among various steering beams. This dual capability opens up diverse application potentials, including multipoint wireless communication and multitarget wireless power transfer.