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This Letter proposes a highly integrated reflection-type approach to generate non-diffracting Bessel beams using a source-integrated folded reflectarray antenna (FRA). The FRA not only transforms spherical waves radiated by the feeding source to conical waves but also directly produces Bessel beams by specifying the phase distribution of reflectarray elements. To validate this approach, a millimeter-wave zero-order Bessel beam generator and a conventional collimated beam structure are analyzed, designed, fabricated, and measured. Good agreement among theoretical analysis, full-wave simulation, and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed FRA successfully generates non-diffracting Bessel beams and, moreover, the reflectarray elements are fully integrated with the feeding source in the same low-cost single-layered printed circuit board.

Using the transverse Hertz vector potentials, vector analyses of linearly and circularly polarized Bessel beams of arbitrary orders are presented in this paper. Expressions for the electric and magnetic fields of vector Bessel beams in free space that are rigorous solutions to the vector Helmholtz equation are derived. Their respective time averaged energy density and Poynting vector are also obtained, in order to exhibit their non-diffracting properties. Polarization patterns and magnitude profiles with different parameters are displayed. Particular emphasis is placed on the cases where the ratio of wave number over its transverse component k/kt approximately equals to one and largely exceeds it, which corresponding to the nonparaxial and paraxial condition, respectively. These results allow us to recognize that the vector Bessel beams exhibit new and important features, compared with the scalar fields.