超薄宽带平面聚焦超表面及其在高增益天线中的应用

Ultra-thin broadband flat metasurface to focus electromagnetic waves and its application in high-gain antenna

针对相位梯度超表面在灵活操控电磁波与提高天线增益中的潜在应用,提出一种新型的宽带超表面单元,实现了在较宽频带范围内操控电磁波波前与提高天线增益.本文首先设计了一种圆环十字形对称单元来控制反射波的相移量,单元厚度为1 mm,尺寸为0.3λ_0(λ_0=20 mm),工作频段15—18 GHz,而后验证了由该单元组成的相位梯度超表面在15—18 GHz范围内对电磁波的奇异反射与聚焦特性.最后将设计的反射聚焦超表面应用于提高天线增益中,仿真与测试结果均表明,天线最高增益在15—18 GHz内平均增加了11 d B且-1 dB增益带宽为15—18 GHz(相对带宽为18.2%).由于厚度薄、重量轻、频带宽,设计的该单元拓展了相位梯度超表面在微波领域的应用,有望为高增益天线的实现提供新的方法.

The phase gradient metasurface has strong abilities to manipulate electromagnetic waves on a subwavelength scare and has a potential to enhance the antenna gain. Based on the single multi-resonance metallic patch srtucture, we propose a new kind of ultra-thin broadband unit cell to manipulate electromagnetic waves and enhance the gain. It has been demonstrated that anomalous reflection can be achieved by utilizing the magnetic resonance between metallic patch and ground plane. Moreover, it is believed that resonance with low quality factor （Q factor） is useful in extending the working bandwidth. In order to extend the bandwidth of phase modulation, it is necessary to design a kind of low-Q unit cell. Besides, we need to extend the phase shift to cover the entire range [0°, 360°] to achieve the focusing effect. Thus we design a suitable symmetrical unit cell composed of ring and cross metallic patterns to control the phase of reflected waves. The symmetrical structure is useful for decreasing the Q factor so as to get a kind of low-Q unit cell. Theoretically, ring and cross metallic patch can be regarded as multi-resonance unit cells, which can cover the entire scope [0°, 360°]. The unit cell operates at 15-18 GHz with a thickness of 1 mm and the sides of 0.3λ0 （λ0 = 20 mm）. Furthermore, we design a phase gradient metasurface composed of the designed unit cell to verify the broadband anomalous reflection and focusing effects in CST Microwave Studio; the effect can be clearly illustrated in the simulation results obtained at 15-18 GHz. Due to the successful conversion from plane wave to quasi-spherical wave, we can place the Vivaldi antenna at the focal point of the metasurface as a feed source to transform the quasi-spherical wave to plane wave to enhance antenna gain. The simulation results are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis. Meanwhile, the designed metasurface and Vivaldi antenna have been fabricated and applied to enhance the gain of Vivaldi antenna. Both simulation and test results show that the peak gain has been averagely enhanced by 11 dB during the -1 dB gain bandwidth of 15-18 GHz and the fractional bandwidth is 18.2%. Moreover, due to the thin thickness, light weight and broad band, the designed unit cell may open up a new route for the applications of phase gradient metasurfaces in the microwave band region, and may also used as an alternative of high-gain antenna.