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A broadband circularly polarized metasurface antenna with low radar cross section (RCS) is proposed. Four metasurface elements are arranged orthogonally in a 2×2 array and fed with a 90° phase difference to achieve circular polarization radiation. Each metasurface element is a nonuniform subarray of 4×4 metallic patches. Attributed to the nonuniform property of the metasurface element, two characteristic modes with different resonant frequencies but with similar surface current distributions are formed. By optimizing the geometric parameters of the nonuniform element, the two modes are merged with each other, resulting in bandwidth (BW) broadening of the proposed antenna. Simulated and measured results show that the designed antenna has a −10 dB impedance BW of 49.60%, 3 dB axial ratio BW of 33.13%, and peak gain of 13.17 dBic. Moreover, the RCS reduction is higher than 6 dB in the entire operation frequency band. Additionally, the antenna has a low profile of 0.08λ (λ is the free-space wavelength at an operation frequency of 8.25 GHz). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter presents a folded reflectarray (FRA) capable of electrical beam steering in the Ka-band. The FRA consists of a low-profile feeding source, a dual-layer wire grid, and 36×36 polarization twisting reflective elements. An element of center shorted patch with two plated through holes is proposed where only two switches are required for polarization twisting and 1-bit encoding. A cavity is then introduced surrounding the element to improve the beam-steering performance. To verify the proposed element, two prototypes with 0° and 60° beam directions are designed and experimented where the metal stub and open circuit are used to model “on/off” states of PIN diodes for simplification. The measured peak gain of 0°FRA is 27.5 dBi with 2 dB gain bandwidth of 28–32 GHz (13.3%). A measured gain drop of 3.25 dB is achieved by the 60°FRA, which verifies the wide-angle beam-steering ability. The measured reflection coefficient of the feeding source is less than −15 dB over the operating band. The proposed FRA has a good potential to realize beam-steering with real PIN diodes for the satellite communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Huygens’ metasurface with unit cells of glide symmetric I-shape metal strips is proposed for a high-efficiency metalens antenna. The proposed unit cell achieves more than 98.6% transmission amplitude with 360° phase shift coverage for dual polarization. The mechanism is presented by analyzing a unit cell with two dislocated I-shape metal strips, where the electric dipole and magnetic dipole resonances are tuned by the dislocation. The analysis implies that glide symmetric I-shape metal strips are preferable for high transmittance Huygens’ unit cell design. With the proposed Huygens’ unit cell, a high-efficiency metalens antenna is realized. The simulated and measured results show that the proposed metalens antenna of a 14-wavelength diameter achieves a maximum gain of 30.7 dBi at 27.2 GHz, which is only 1.1 dB lower than its theoretical limit. The maximum antenna efficiency is 61.5%. The 3-dB bandwidth of achieved gain ranges from 25.9 to 29 GHz, covering the fifth generation (5G) millimeter-wave bands. The proposed metalens remarkably enhances the radiation performance of the metalens antennas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A double-layered Huygens’ unit cell is proposed to design a broadband metasurface lens (meta-lens) for 5G millimeter-wave antennas. The Huygens’ unit cell consists of a pair of antisymmetric conducting semicircle arc elements on both surfaces of a thin dielectric substrate. The surface currents flowing at the opposite directions on both conducting elements form an electric current loop to induce the orthogonal magnetic current, and then the Huygens’ resonances are stimulated. The Huygens’ unit cell provides the transmission phase coverage of over 400° with transmission amplitude better than −2.3 dB. This breaks through the phase shift limitation of a conventional double-layer frequency-selective surface (FSS) element. It shows that induced magnetism makes such a Huygens-based meta-lens very compact with only one printed circuit board. As an example, a double-layered meta-lens on a 1.5 mm-thick dielectric substrate is designed and experimentally verified. The meta-lens antenna achieves the measured peak gain of 30.7 dBi at 26.2 GHz with an aperture efficiency of 42.25% over the 3 dB bandwidth of 15.7% from 24.1 to 28.2 GHz, fully covering the proposed 5G spectrum from 24.25 to 27.5 GHz. This proposed method greatly helps in the application of promoting planar lightweight low-cost broadband lens antennas in the coming 5G systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]