Pattern Synthesis of Conformal Rectangular Waveguide-fed Metasurface Antennas

We demonstrate pattern synthesis of cylindrically conformal rectangular waveguide-fed metasurface antennas using the dipolar modeling approach. The conformal metasurface antenna consists of printed, dielectric-filled rectangular waveguides and resonant metamaterial radiators etched into the waveguides’ top walls. For pattern synthesis of the conformal metasurfaces, we model individual metamaterial elements as point magnetic and electric dipoles and tune their geometry to find their effective currents (i.e., dipole moments), which leads to a desired radiation pattern. A conformal antenna generating a directive beam at the prescribed direction was designed and analyzed with the full-wave analyses. Using the designed metasurface antenna, we discuss the validity and limitations of the proposed pattern synthesis method. Possible applications of the method include the design of curved metasurfaces for wireless communications, remote sensing, and imaging systems.