60 GHz Microstrip Van Atta Arrays for Millimeter Wave Identification and Localization

In this paper performance comparison of co-polarized and cross-polarized microstrip Van Atta arrays working in the 60 GHz frequency range is presented. They can be treated as simple chipless RFID tags with frequency response based identification. Tags with three different nominal resonance frequencies of 57, 62 and 67 GHz are designed by scaling optimized base model. Designed 62 GHz co-polarized and cross-polarized arrays with four interconnected pairs of elementary antenna arrays have small dimensions of 20 x 18 mm and 36 x 23 mm, and exhibit RCS levels of –20 and -22 dBsm, respectively. The influence of number of interconnected antennas on the radar cross-section (RCS) of the tag is investigated. Frequency responses of the tags are also examined and compared for both types of tags with 0.80 GHz (co-polarized) and 2.10 GHz (cross-polarized) 3 dB bandwidth of the RCS response at 60 degree interrogation angle.